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Tressie McMillan Cottom speaker
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Tressie McMillan Cottom

Renowned Cultural Critic, Sociologist, and Award-Winning Author
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About

Gender: Female
Nationality: United States
Languages: English
Travels from: United States

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Biography Highlights

  • Author of 'Lower Ed' and National Book Award Finalist 'Thick'
  • New York Times Opinion Columnist & Vanity Fair Contributor
  • Recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' Fellowship

Biography

Award-winning writer, sociologist, and cultural critic Tressie McMillan Cottom is celebrated for her profound yet personal ideas and the dynamic accessibility of her analysis. Dr. Cottom’s first book, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy, led to appearances on The Daily Show, NPR’s Marketplace and Fresh Air, and has been name-checked by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and activists like The Debt Strike Collective. Since the release of her second book, Thick: And Other Essays, Dr. Cottom’s career has skyrocketed. Thick became a Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award, and the following year Dr. Cottom received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship – known as the ‘genius grant’. Her work is prolific – beyond her books and celebrated New York Times opinion column, she has written a Substack newsletter “Essaying,” is a contributor for Vanity Fair, co-hosted the Black feminist podcast Hear to Slay with Roxane Gay, and has sat in as a guest host for The Ezra Klein Show. Her books have become modern classics, and her commentary is in demand on a wide range of topics like inclusive marketing, creating policy narratives, technology, the future of democracy, and the cultural zeitgeist.

Dr. Cottom is a public academic whose work is as impactful on Twitter as it is in groundbreaking research, and continually reimagines how our society might function better on behalf of the most marginalized. She has a devoted fanbase for her essays (Tressays, as her fans call them), which defy the form – she explores the intersections of race, class, and gender, in the same breath as incisive pop culture critique and personal history. Dr. Cottom is currently a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and is sought after as a consultant for both global brands and on Capitol Hill. Dr. Cottom is equally in demand as a cultural authority – she was tapped to pen the Harper’s BAZAAR cover story for Venus & Serena Williams. In her writing, as well as in luminous keynotes and moderated conversations, Dr. Cottom tells creative stories of her research and herself – taking theory into real-world understanding for audiences of all kinds.

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Popular Talks

Tressie McMillan Cottom is a celebrated cultural critic, an esteemed sociologist, and award-winning writer of phenomenal breadth. In this engaging moderated conversation, Dr. Cottom explores today’s most pressing issues including politics, technology, beauty, media, and more, with an essential lens – balancing sharp insights with humor – making for an impactful and unforgettable event for audiences of all kinds.

Available: In person, Virtually

Leading sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom is frequently called on to consult with global brands and leverage data-driven and research-based approaches to create meaningful narratives, unify corporate identities, and drive innovative decision-making. Dr. Cottom is able to bring issues of race, gender, and class together in dynamic conversation, providing CEOs and C-Suite leaders important and essential ways to understand what is happening in their workplaces and how their brands are performing in the marketplace. This talk can be programmed as a keynote, fireside chat conversation, or as a consultancy to ensure maximum impact for your organization.

Available: In person, Virtually

Celebrated sociologist and author Tressie McMillan Cottom offers key insights into the current state of politics, and how Black women are shaping the future of the American Democratic project. From defining social movements, to how our identities influence our electoral choices, Dr. Cottom’s profound analysis makes for a dynamic, relevant, and memorable talk.

Available: In person, Virtually

MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellow and award-winning author Tressie McMillan Cottom is in demand for her thrilling analysis of how pop culture, politics, and policy that are in the headlines and at the heart of the zeitgeist. In this imagination-expanding moderated conversation, Dr. Cottom uses personal history, her background in social science, and her gifts for humor and storytelling to offer a wide-ranging yet accessible view of the essential factors impacting current discourse.

Available: In person, Virtually

For trenchant cultural critic and leading sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom, the most pressing conversation about the ever-evolving role of technology in our culture is how people use it, how it shapes our lives, and how it inevitably reproduces inequality – from changing access to higher education to making the labor market more unequal. In this potent conversation, Dr. Cottom untangles the threads, offering personal and empirical insights that shift our thinking and spark innovation.

Available: In person, Virtually

Sociologist and award-winning author Tressie McMillan Cottom delves into the Black maternal experience of healthcare in this resonant and eye-opening talk. Drawing from one of the most impactful essays in her book Thick: And Other Essays, Dr. Cottom weaves together her personal experience with irrefutable data in an urgent analysis of the healthcare system in the U.S. and how it impacts Black women throughout their lives and most critically, during maternity and into motherhood.

Available: In person, Virtually
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Testimonials

Dr. Cottom was amazing and gave our guests such a wealth of information and ways to think about our work here in NC.

NC Budget and Tax Center

Books

Tressie McMillan Cottom book

Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy

“The best book yet on the complex lives and choices of for-profit students.” —The New York Times Book Review As featured on The Daily Show, NPR’s Marketplace, and Fresh Air, the “powerful, chilling tale” (Carol Anderson, author of White Rage) of higher education becoming an engine of social inequality < Lower Ed is quickly becoming the definitive book on the fastest-growing sector of higher education at the turn of the twenty-first century: for-profit colleges. With sharp insight and deliberate acumen, Tressie McMillan Cottom—a sociologist who was once a recruiter at two for-profit colleges—expertly parses the fraught dynamics of this big-money industry. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with students, employees, executives, and activists, Lower Ed details the benefits, pitfalls, and real costs of the expansion of for-profit colleges. Now with a new foreword by Stephanie Kelton, economic advisor to Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign, this smart and essential book cuts to the very core of our nation's broken social contracts and the challenges we face in our divided, unequal society.

Read more..

Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy

"The best book yet on the complex lives and choices of for-profit students." —The New York Times Book Review As featured on The Daily Show, NPR's Marketplace, and Fresh Air, the "powerful, chilling tale" (Carol Anderson, author of White Rage) of higher education becoming an engine of social inequality < Lower Ed is quickly becoming the definitive book on the fastest-growing sector of higher education at the turn of the twenty-first century: for-profit colleges. With sharp insight and deliberate acumen, Tressie McMillan Cottom—a sociologist who was once a recruiter at two for-profit colleges—expertly parses the fraught dynamics of this big-money industry. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with students, employees, executives, and activists, Lower Ed details the benefits, pitfalls, and real costs of the expansion of for-profit colleges. Now with a new foreword by Stephanie Kelton, economic advisor to Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign, this smart and essential book cuts to the very core of our nation's broken social contracts and the challenges we face in our divided, unequal society.
Buy the book
Buy the book
Tressie McMillan Cottom book

Thick: And Other Essays

Recommended by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Book Riot, BuzzFeed, Bust, LitHub, The Millions, HelloGiggles, and UrbanDaddy “The author you need to read now.” (Chicago Tribune) “To say this collection is transgressive, provocative, and brilliant is simply to tell you the truth.” (Roxane Gay, author of Hunger and Bad Feminist) Smart, humorous, and strikingly original essays by one of “America’s most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time.” (Rebecca Traister) In these eight piercing explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom – award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed – embraces her venerated role as a purveyor of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark about all that is right and much that is wrong with this thing we call society. Ideas and identity fuse effortlessly in this vibrant collection that on bookshelves is just as at home alongside Rebecca Solnit and bell hooks as it is beside Jeff Chang and Janet Mock. It also fills an important void on those very shelves: a modern Black American feminist voice waxing poetic on self and society, serving up a healthy portion of clever prose and southern aphorisms as she covers everything from Saturday Night Live, LinkedIn, and BBQ Becky to sexual violence, infant mortality, and Trump rallies. Thick speaks fearlessly to a range of topics and is far more genre-bending than a typical compendium of personal essays. An intrepid intellectual force hailed by the likes of Trevor Noah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Oprah, Tressie McMillan Cottom is “among America’s most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time” (Rebecca Traister). This stunning debut collection – in all its intersectional glory – mines for meaning in places many of us miss, and reveals precisely how the political, the social, and the personal are almost always one and the same.

Read more..

Thick: And Other Essays

Recommended by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Book Riot, BuzzFeed, Bust, LitHub, The Millions, HelloGiggles, and UrbanDaddy “The author you need to read now.” (Chicago Tribune) “To say this collection is transgressive, provocative, and brilliant is simply to tell you the truth.” (Roxane Gay, author of Hunger and Bad Feminist) Smart, humorous, and strikingly original essays by one of “America’s most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time.” (Rebecca Traister) In these eight piercing explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom – award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed – embraces her venerated role as a purveyor of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark about all that is right and much that is wrong with this thing we call society. Ideas and identity fuse effortlessly in this vibrant collection that on bookshelves is just as at home alongside Rebecca Solnit and bell hooks as it is beside Jeff Chang and Janet Mock. It also fills an important void on those very shelves: a modern Black American feminist voice waxing poetic on self and society, serving up a healthy portion of clever prose and southern aphorisms as she covers everything from Saturday Night Live, LinkedIn, and BBQ Becky to sexual violence, infant mortality, and Trump rallies. Thick speaks fearlessly to a range of topics and is far more genre-bending than a typical compendium of personal essays. An intrepid intellectual force hailed by the likes of Trevor Noah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Oprah, Tressie McMillan Cottom is “among America’s most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time” (Rebecca Traister). This stunning debut collection – in all its intersectional glory – mines for meaning in places many of us miss, and reveals precisely how the political, the social, and the personal are almost always one and the same.
Buy the book
Buy the book

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