Dear RSF:

Please join us next Wednesday, June 1st at 11:00 for Visiting Scholar Monica Bell’s presentation, “An Unfolding: From Black Oppression and Despair to Black Healing and Play.”

Bell is a Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University, where she has been since 2017. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale University, and a M.Sc. in Equality Studies from University College Dublin (Ireland). Her areas of expertise include criminal justice, welfare law, housing, race and the law, qualitative research methods, and law and sociology. Bell’s publications have appeared in both academic journals and popular mainstream newspapers and magazines. Academic outlets have included The Yale Law School Journal, Law & Society Review, Social Service Review and the Annual Review of Law & Social Science. Her essays and reviews for the broader market have included pieces in the Washington Post and the LA Review of Books.

At RSF, Bell is working on a book (Oxford University Press, under contract) about efforts to reform U.S. law and policy on race and class marginalization. Drawing in part on interview data from a participatory study of black youth, she concludes that policymakers often miss an important challenge confronting lawmakers in poor communities of color: legal estrangement, or the process through which institutions perpetuate the idea that marginalized groups do not fully share in all the rights and freedoms that flow to other Americans.