Mon 2/2 @ 6:00PM
The Princeton Public Library

Sociologist Sanyu Mojola, joined in conversation with Waverly Duck and Tukufu Zuberi, presents her new book Death by Design: Producing Racial Health Inequality in the Shadow of the Capitol.

Washington, DC, has the nation's largest racial life expectancy gap, and it has experienced many of the nation's worst epidemics, including maternal and infant mortality, homicide, heroin overdoses, and HIV/AIDS. These epidemics have disproportionately affected African Americans. Starting with the city’s founding and drawing on a range of sources including archival material, life history interviews, and disease surveillance data, Mojola’s book illustrates how the physical, social, and policy design of the city contributes to the production and reproduction of disproportionate Black death.

Waverly Duck is UC Santa Barbara’s North Hall Chair Endowed Professor of Sociology. He is the author of No Way Out: Precarious Living in the Shadow of Poverty and Drug Dealing, a finalist for the Society for the Study of Social Problems C. Wright Mills Book Award.  He is co-author of Tacit Racism, 2022 Book Award winner for the North Central Sociological Association, and Black Lives Matter: Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic Studies of Race and Systemic Racism in Everyday Interaction.

Sanyu A. Mojola is Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs and Maurice P. During Professor of Demographic Studies at Princeton University. She directed Princeton's Office of Population Research from 2020 to 2024. Her book Love, Money and HIV: Becoming a Modern African Woman in the Age of AIDS won multiple awards, including the 2016 Distinguished Scholarly Book Award from the American Sociological Association.  Her work has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology and Journal of Marriage and Family. She has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Sociology, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Studies in Family Planning, and is currently serving on the editorial boards of the American Sociological Review and Population and Development Review.

Tukufu Zuberi is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he currently serves as the Chair of the Department of Sociology and has served as the Chair of the Graduate Group in Demography, the Director of the African Studies Program, and the Director of the Afro-American Studies Program.  In 2002, he became the founding Director of the Center for Africana Studies, where he has also served as Faculty Associate Director. He has been a visiting professor at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Presented in partnership with Princeton Public Library and with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.