Best-selling author to address black issues

Tuesday, Michael Eric Dyson will speak in Lee Hall at 7 p.m.

Dyson is a scholar of African- American urban, cultural and religious studies, a university professor and a best-selling author.

Dyson’s 1993 debut, “Reflecting Black: African- American Cultural Criticism,” won the Gustavus Myers Center for Human Rights Award in 1994.

His critically acclaimed follow-up in 1994, “Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X,” was named a Notable Book of 1994 by both the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dyson’s third book, “Between God and Gangsta Rap: Bearing Witness to Black Culture,” was named a “Best Bet” in USA Today, which said Dyson’s writing “possesses an enviable energy and an ability to mesh influences that include everything from Shakespeare to Public Enemy.”

Dyson’s book, “Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line,” published in paperback by Vintage Press, has been praised as “an important document for the end of the century and was a national bestseller.

In 2000, the Free Press published Dyson’s “I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King Jr.,” which became a bestseller and has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award for outstanding nonfiction literary work.

Dyson, who taught at Chicago Theological Seminary, Brown University, Columbia University and the University of North Carolina, is presently an Ida B. Wells-Barnett University professor and professor of religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago.

Dyson received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy, magnum cum laude, from Carson-Newman College and his master’s and doctoral degrees in religion from Princeton University.

His commentary on American culture has taken him to “Nightline,” “The Charlie Rose Show,” “Good Morning America” and the “Today Show” and has led to appearances on “Oprah” and BET.

He has also been heard on every major show on National Public Radio.

–compiled by Sarah Vinson

Source: www.apbspeakers.com