This is (Not) What I Expected: Difference and Dignity Through Literature and the Arts

Claudia Rankine's book Citizen: An American Lyric, serves as a source of healing, or what UGA College of Education professor Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor refers to as "literary and artistic micro-validation": the ways in which books of fiction, literary non-fiction, poetry, film, and visual art can provide small, often intended images and words that nurture feelings of inclusion and validation for diverse experiences and perspectives.

This series of events includes numerous events that shift expectations of micro-aggression toward validation through deep attention to the past, present, and possible futures at UGA and in our larger Athens community.

Learn more about the author

Claudia Rankine is a poet illuminating the emotional and psychic tensions that mark the experiences of many living in 21st-century America. Watch a video from Claudia Rankine's 2016 MacArthur Fellow award.