Marlon James Novelist and Educator

Wednesday, March 1, 2017, 8pm Zellerbach Hall

In Conversation with Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks

15 BERKELEY TALKS

BERKELEY TALKS brings international thought leaders, public intellectuals, creators, and innovators to the Berkeley campus to engage in dialogues with campus scholars on distinctive and timely issues, exploring forward-thinking concepts that impact our global community and intersect with the university’s core mission of teaching, research, and public service.

Marlon James won the 2015 Man Booker Prize Nicholas B. Dirks be - for Fiction for his most recent novel, A Brief came the 10th chancellor History of Seven Killings , making him the first of the University of Cali- Jamaican author to take home the UK’s most for nia, Berkeley, on June 1, prestigious literary award. In the work, James 2013. An interna tionally explores Jamaican history through the perspec - renowned historian and tives of multiple narrators and genres: the anthropologist, he is a political thriller, the oral biography, and the leader in higher educa - classic whodunit confront the untold history tion and is well-known of Jamaica in the 1970s, with excursions to the for his commitment to and advocacy for acces - assassination attempt on reggae musician Bob sible, high-quality undergraduate education in Marley, as well as the country’s own clandestine the liberal arts and sciences, to the globalization battles during the Cold War. Writing for The of the university, and to innovation across the New York Times , Michiko Kakutani said of A disciplines as well as in applied and basic fields. Brief History of Seven Killings , “It’s epic in every Before coming to Berkeley, he was the exec - sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over-the- utive vice president for the arts and sciences top, colossal and dizzyingly complex. It’s also and dean of the faculty at Columbia University, raw, dense, violent, scalding, darkly comic, where, in addition to his work on behalf of un - exhilarating and exhausting—a testament to dergraduate programs, he improved and diver - Mr. James’s vaulting ambition and prodigious sified the faculty, putting special emphasis on talent.” James is in the process of adapting the interdisciplinary and international initiatives. work into an HBO television series. The Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and James’ first novel, 2005’s John Crow’s Devil , History, Chancellor Dirks joined Columbia in tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote 1997 as chair of the anthropology department. Jamaican village in the 1950s. His second novel, Prior to his appointment at Columbia, he was a 2009’s The Book of Night Women , is about a slave professor of history and anthropology at the women’s revolt on a Jamaican plantation in the University of Michigan for 10 years, before early 19th century. James’ short fiction and non - which he taught Asian history and civilization at fiction have appeared in Esquire , Granta , Har per’s , the California Institute of Technology. The New York Times Magazine, The Carib bean Chancellor Dirks has held numerous fellow - Review of Books, and other publications. ships and scholarships and received several James was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1970, scholarly honors, including a MacArthur Foun- and graduated from the University of the West dation residential fellowship at the Institute for Indies in 1991 with a degree in language and Advanced Study at Princeton, a Guggenheim literature, and from Wilkes University in Penn - fellowship, and the Lionel Trilling Award for his sylvania in 2006 with a master’s in creative book Castes of Mind . He serves on numerous writing. He currently lives in Minneapolis, national and international bodies, as adviser Minne sota and teaches English and creative or member of the board, and is a fellow at the writing at Macalester College. Council on Foreign Relations.

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