The Seminar: Claudia Rankine, “The Poetics of Citizenship”

The Seminar on Research, Leadership, and Innovation

The best ideas, the brightest conversations — come be a part of it. Join the Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships every Thursday from 6-7 PM in West Village F 20 for conversations with thought-leaders and change-makers from both inside and outside the university.

“The Poetics of Citizenship” 
Claudia Rankine, Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry, Yale University

Claudia Rankine is a poet whose 2014 book-length poem Citizen: An American Lyric is a powerful and timely meditation on race, violence, and language in contemporary America. Citizen won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among many other honors. Rankine’s work is distinguished by its experimental blending of genres and registers, mixing lyricism with social and literary criticism, visual composition, and other forms of expression. Rankine’s boundary-crossing books are expanding both the definition of and the audience for poetry; Citizen was a New York Times bestseller in the “nonfiction” category, the only book of poetry ever to be so listed. In 2016, Rankine received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” for her body of “critical texts that are proving to be essential for understanding American life while also enriching the craft of poetry with a new sense of agency and urgency.”