Isenberg

Historian Nancy Isenberg will discuss class and privilege in America at the Krieger Lecture in American Political Culture May 4.

The lecture, “White Trash: Class Politics, American Style,” will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Isenberg’s work has addressed and challenged long-held beliefs about a “land of opportunity” and the “American Dream” that have persisted from colonial times to the present. The event is free and open to the public.

Isenberg is the T. Harry Professor of American History at Louisiana State University. Her book, “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America,” was a New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book of 2016. The book takes on the myth that America is a class-free society. It’s available at the Cornell Store and will also be sold at the event by Buffalo Street Books.

“Nancy Isenberg, a professor of history at Louisiana State University, has authored a gritty and sprawling assault on this aspect of American mythmaking,” a Washington Post review said. “Ours is very much a class-based society, she argues, and had been long before Occupy Wall Street or Bernie Sanders, long before we were a country at all.”

Isenberg won the 1999 best book prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. Her book “Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr” was short-listed for the L.A Times Book Prize in Biography. Isenberg is a regular contributor to Salon.com and has published in The Nation, The Washington Post and the Journal of American History.

The Krieger Lecture in American Political Culture is sponsored by the American Studies Program.

Yvette Ndlovu is a communications assistant for the College of Arts and Sciences.