University of New England

MIT scholar Melissa Nobles
to discuss racial
categorization and political apologies March 7th

Scholar and author Melissa Nobles will discuss the political origins and consequences of racial categorization in demographic censuses on Tuesday, March 7, 2006 at noon in the St. Francis Room, Ketchum Library on the University Campus of the University of New England in Biddeford.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology associate professor will also explore the political uses of official apologies.

Her lecture, part of UNE’s Core Connections Lecture Series, is free and open to the public.

Nobles is the author of Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics where she analyzes the political origins and consequences of racial categorization in demographic censuses in the United States and Brazil.

She is currently working on a book-length manuscript titled The Past is Present: Official Apologies and Multicultural Citizenship in which she examines and compares political uses of official apologies, focusing on Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. The book explores why minority groups demand such apologies and why governments give them (or not).

A 1985 graduate of Brown University, Nobles received both her master’s and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. She was a 2003-2004 Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advance Study at Harvard University and has also received numerous awards, including the 2001 Outstanding Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.