Join Academy Award®-winning screenwriter Cord Jefferson for a conversation with 2023 Berggruen Prize Laureate, Dr. Patricia Hill Collins, a renowned sociologist specializing in the study of race, class, and gender, about her scholarship and how his film American Fiction (2023) challenges dominant stereotypes and narratives around Black life, culture, perspectives, and experiences. Followed by a screening of American Fiction.

American Fiction

Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut, an Oscar-winning adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, is a sharp, timely, and thought-provoking satire on the relationship between race and representation, art and commerce. American Fiction stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a frustrated novelist critical of the literary establishment’s hunger for stereotypical Black voices and stories. In a moment of outrage, after his latest manuscript is rejected for not being “Black” enough, he writes an outlandish book under a pen name—one that propels him to the heart of the hypocrisy and hype he intended to satire. Meanwhile, Monk’s reunion with his estranged family sets him on a path of self-discovery and challenges his definition of success.

BIOS

Dr. Patricia Hill Collins is a renowned sociologist specializing in the study of race, class, and gender. She is a pioneer of the concept of “intersectionality,” helping to develop analysis of the interactions among different forms of inequality and oppression. Her 2019 book Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory is a landmark in developing the concept and insight into a substantial analytical framework.

In 2008, she became the 100th President of the American Sociological Association, the first African American woman elected to this position in the organization’s 104-year history. In 2022, she was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. In 2023, she was awarded the prestigious Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, an award given annually to an individual whose ideas have profoundly shaped human self-understanding and advancement in a rapidly changing world.

She is a distinguished university professor of sociology emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati.

Cord Jefferson is an Academy Award®-winning and Emmy Award-winning writer and director who has worked on some of the most complex and popular series of the past decade and has earned praise for being one of the most multifaceted and versatile storytellers.

Jefferson made his feature writing and directorial debut with American Fiction (2023), which won an Academy Award in the category of Best Adapted Screenplay and garnered 5 total Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture in 2024. Jefferson also won a Critics Choice Award, BAFTA Award, and Film Independent Spirit Award for his screenplay, an adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel Erasure. He was also nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a First-Time Theatrical Feature Film at the DGA Awards and the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures at the PGA Awards.

The film took home 54 wins and received 147 nominations and 8 honors after its world debut at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim and won the festival’s top prize, the People’s Choice Award. MGM’s Orion Pictures released the film in December 2023.

It has been announced that Jefferson will write and executive produce Amazon Prime Video’s limited series adaption of John Katzenbach’s novel Just Cause alongside acclaimed writer John Wells, starring Scarlett Johansson in her first major television role.

Jefferson’s recent credits are a powerhouse of critically acclaimed television series that include the groundbreaking limited series Watchmen, for which he won an Emmy award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series alongside Damon Lindelof for their episode “This Extraordinary Being.” Other credits include the philosophical comedy The Good Place and drama series tour-de-force Succession. Among the accolades that Jefferson has earned for his work on these series are two Writers Guild Awards and an NAACP Image Award for writing The Good Place’s “Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy” episode. Jefferson was also the winner of the AFI and has been nominated for the DGA, PGA, and SAG awards.

Jefferson’s other credits include the HBO Max series Station Eleven; Netflix’s Master of None, where he wrote the episode “New York, I Love You”; Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore; and the Starz comedy series Survivor’s Remorse.

Prior to making his way into television, Jefferson was a journalist, most notably serving as the West Coast editor for Gawker. During his tenure in journalism, Jefferson also wrote for such outlets as The New York Times, National Geographic, NPR, USA Today, MSNBC, Bookforum, and The Daily Beast, among others.