Scholar, activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Salamishah Tillet will present a lecture on jazz singer and civil rights icon Nina Simone's musical origins in Tyron, North Carolina, and her vexed legacy there. Part memoir, part criticism and part cultural history, the talk is excerpted from Tillet's forthcoming book, "All The Rage: Nina Simone and The World She Made," which explores how Simone’s “vision of America shaped Tillet’s own pursuit of justice as a writer, mother and activist.” The short lecture will be followed by a moderated discussion with College of Arts and Humanities Dean and Professor of Ethnomusicology Stephanie Shonekan. Connected by a shared love for Simone’s music, the two will discuss how Simone used her art as an advocacy tool for the civil rights movement. The event will conclude with a Q&A.

Tillet is the Henry Rutgers Professor of creative writing and African American and African studies and the executive director of Express Newark, a center for socially engaged art and design at Rutgers. She is also the founding director of the New Arts Justice Initiative, a Rutgers incubator committed to Black feminist approaches to art’s relationship to place, social justice and civic engagement in Newark and beyond. Tillet was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2022 for her work as a contributing critic at large for The New York Times. She is the author of “In Search of the Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece” and “Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination.”

Presented by the College of Arts and Humanities in partnership with the School of Music, this event is part of Arts for All, a campuswide initiative leveraging the combined power of the arts, technology and social justice to address the grand challenges of our time. This event is open to students, faculty, staff and the general public.