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University of North Carolina historian William Sturkey, winner of the 10th annual Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White, visits Zócalo to discuss the community Hattiesburg built, how it helped birth and bolster the Civil Rights movement—and why those successes may ultimately have destroyed it. Professor Sturkey will be interviewed by historian David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University.

May 20, 2020

Historian Omer Bartov Wins the Ninth Annual Zócalo Book Prize

Anatomy of a Genocide Is ‘a Haunting Warning of the Fragility of Order and Goodness in Our World’

March 4, 2019

Omer Bartov, John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University, is the winner of the ninth annual Zócalo Book Prize for Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life …

Historian and Political Philosopher Michael Ignatieff Wins the Eighth Annual Zócalo Book Prize

The Ordinary Virtues Examines How Trust, Honesty, and Respect Can Glue a Fractured World Back Together

April 3, 2018

Michael Ignatieff—president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and writer, most recently of The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order …

Mitchell Duneier Explains the Invention of the Ghetto, as Place and as Idea

The Zócalo Book Prize Winner Discusses the Evolution of Ethnic Enclaves, from Renaissance Europe to the Modern U.S.

By Sarah Rothbard | May 15, 2017

When sociologist Mitchell Duneier was growing up in the 1960s, he said, “references to the word ghetto were references in my house and in my segregated Jewish community on Long …

The Ghetto’s Complex and Troubled Legacy

Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea

By Mitchell Duneier | May 11, 2017

In 2017, we often hear the word “ghetto” come up in music lyrics and casual conversation, out of the mouths of politicians and activists. We know what it means; it …

Princeton Sociologist Mitchell Duneier Wins the 2017 Zócalo Book Prize

Ghetto Investigates the History of a Word, a Place, and an Idea That Has Shaped Our Cities and Culture

March 31, 2017

Mitchell Duneier, author of Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea and a sociologist at Princeton University, is the winner of the seventh annual Zócalo Book …

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