Patricia J. Williams

Teju Cole photographed by Donavon Smallwood

The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law with Patricia Williams and Teju Cole
Date: Sunday, August 25, 2024
Time: 4:00PM
Location: Francine Kelly Gallery at Featherstone Center for the Arts
Fee: free

Join us on Sunday, August 25th at 4PM for a conversation with authors and professors, Patricia Williams and Teju Cole. They will be discussing Patricia's newly released book The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law. The event will begin with a welcome from Diane Wachtell, Executive Director of The New Press, and will include audience Q&A, a reading by Patricia, and a book signing to follow with both Patricia and Teju (his most recent novel Tremor (2023), was named a book of the year by Time, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, the Times (UK), and the Financial Times).

About The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law:  In this book of essays, law scholar and celebrated journalist Patricia J. Williams uses the lens of the law to address core questions of identity, ethics, and race. With her elegant prose and critical legal studies wisdom, Williams brings a keen, analytic eye and a lawyer’s training to chapters exploring the ways we have legislated the ownership of everything from body parts to gene sequences — and the particular ways in which our laws in these areas isolate non-normative looks, minority cultures, and out-of-the-box thinkers.

Martha's Vineyard Times: July 1, 2024 Patricia J. Williams ponders ‘The Miracle of the Black Leg’

Patricia J. Williams is a legal scholar and University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University, and previously the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She has published widely in the areas of race, gender, and law. Her books, including The Alchemy of Race and Rights: A Diary of a Law Professor (Harvard University Press, 1991), illustrate some of America’s most complex societal problems and challenge our ideas about cultural constructs of race and gender. She is also a contributing editor and columnist for the Nation.

Williams has authored hundreds of essays, book reviews, and articles for journals, popular magazines, and newspapers, including the Guardian, Ms., the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Washington Post. She has appeared on such radio and television shows as All Things Considered, Charlie Rose, Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, and Today and in such documentary films as That Rush! (1995), which she wrote and narrated. She is a contributing writer to The Nation and the author, most recently, of The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law. (June 2024). She has received awards from the American Educational Studies Association and the National Organization for Women, among others, and has been a MacArthur Fellow. Williams earned her JD from Harvard Law School.

Teju Cole is a novelist, essayist, and photographer. He was the photography critic of the New York Times Magazine from 2015 until 2019. He is currently the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard and a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. 
​His most recent book is the novel Tremor (2023), named a book of the year by Time, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, the Times (UK), and the Financial Times, among others.
Teju Cole has contributed to the New York Times, the New Yorker, Granta, Brick, and many other magazines. His photography column at the New York Times Magazine, “On Photography,” was a finalist for a 2016 National Magazine Award.

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