Lawrence Jackson is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History at Johns Hopkins University. He has recently published Shelter: A Black Tale of Homeland Baltimore (Gray Wolf Press, 2023), a memoir about his search for housing in the city of Baltimore as a single Black male parent. He will deliver a lecture on the competing narrative strategies that have shaped his memoir writing and other developments in Black literary history.

Jackson comes to Vassar under the auspices of the Dean of the Faculty Intensive Course Initiative and through the generosity of the American Studies Program, the Urban Studies Program, and the Africana Studies Program.