An appearance by New York Times bestselling author Matthew Desmond 鈥 whose work focuses on urban sociology, poverty, race and ethnicity 鈥 ushers in the fall semester of the Lowell Humanities Series, which will bring the distinguished guest speaker program beyond its traditional format.

The fall lineup 鈥渋ncludes prominent speakers 鈥 scholars, artists, writers, and performers 鈥 with a distinguished track record of producing award-winning, innovative and important work,鈥 said series director Associate Professor of English James Smith, but also will feature 鈥渘ew territory for the Lowell 鈥 including performance art, installation art, as well as Lowell favorites including sociology, poetry, history, and creative non-fiction.鈥

Desmond, along with poet Major Jackson and spoken-word performer Marc Bamuthi Joseph, 鈥渆ach working in their own medium, extend the important conversation about race and social justice foregrounded by a number of speakers last year,鈥 said Smith.听

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鈥ept. 21, Matthew Desmond: Desmond鈥檚 book - Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, which draws on years of embedded fieldwork, takes readers into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee and tells the story of eight families on the edge of poverty and eviction. He also authored the award-winning On the Fireline, coauthored two books on race, and edited a collection of studies on severe deprivation in America. A recipient of a 2015 MacArthur 鈥済enius鈥 grant, he is John L. Loeb associate professor of the social sciences at Harvard University and co-directs the Justice and Poverty Project.听

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鈥ct. 5, Major Jackson: Poetry Days will present Jackson, author of four collections of poetry including Holding Company and Hoops 鈥 both finalists for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry 鈥 and Leaving Saturn, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. The poetry editor of the Harvard Review, Jackson has been the recipient of a Whiting Writers鈥 Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. 聽

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鈥ct. 12, Paula Findlen: An award-winning historian at Stanford University, Findlen focuses on science and culture in the age of Galileo, the history of museums, collecting and material culture, and gender and knowledge. She developed a collaborative, NEH-funded digital humanities project, 鈥淢apping the Republic of Letters,鈥 to analyze and present networks of knowledge and information in early modern Europe, its overseas colonies, and its global mercantile and religious communities. She currently is working on a project of Galileo鈥檚 correspondence. 聽

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