Politics in the Age of Obama is Topic of Allison Davis Lecture

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Cathy J. Cohen, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, will deliver the Allison Davis Lecture on " Rebirth of a Nation: Black Youth and Democracy in the Age of Obama" on Thursday, Nov. 6 at Northwestern University.

The admission-free, public lecture will take place at 4:30 p.m. in the McCormick Tribune Center on Northwestern's Evanston Campus.

Cohen has been a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago since 2002; she served as the director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago from 2002-05. She previously was a member of the faculty at Yale University, where she earned tenure, the third African American to do so in Yale's 300-year history.

Cohen's general field of specialization is American politics, and she also conducts research on African American politics, women and politics, lesbian and gay politics and social movements.

She is the author of the book "The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics" (University of Chicago Press, 1999) and the co-editor with Kathleen Jones and Joan Tronto of "Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader" (NYU, 1997).

The Allison Davis Lecture is named in honor of one of the first African Americans to receive tenure at a non-historically black institution. Northwestern's department of African American Studies hosts the annual lecture. Davis, who received tenure in 1948 at the University of Chicago, is best known for his work in pointing out the cultural biases of IQ testing in the United States. Previous Davis lectures have included Patricia Williams, William Julius Wilson and Carol Moseley Braun.

(Melissa Kreitner, a junior in the Medill School of Journalism, contributed to this story.)