Raue Center Welcomes Author, Speaker Rich Benjamin on October 14th!

Raue Center For The Arts is excited to present celebrated author and speaker Rich Benjamin on October 14, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. for his outstanding lecture The Divided States of America: Big National Transformations, Small Towns. Benjamin, a cultural anthropologist, will discuss his personal experiences engaging with communities in small-town America and his deft observations of modern society, culture, and politics with a goal toward building understanding and openness. This timely discussion with one of America’s finest scholars will include a Q & A session moderated by James Knight.

“I believe that adaptation requires openness,” said Benjamin. “It requires a willingness to understand others, a willingness to understand oneself. And I believe in that willingness comes an openness to change.”

Benjamin’s cultural and political analysis appears regularly in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and The New York Times Sunday Book Review, and on National Public Radio (NPR). His scholarly research has received support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, Brown University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Benjamin has a BA in English and Political Science from Wesleyan University and a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. He sits on the Board of Trustees of the Authors Guild, the national union of writers that has been protecting authors’ rights and free speech since 1912.

He is the author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, selected as an Editor’s Choice by Booklist and The American Library Association (2009). Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, calls Searching for Whitopia, now in its second printing, “a daring feat of the 21st century exploration that will have you laughing and shuddering at the same time.” Benjamin is currently at work on a new book, Talk to Me.

Tickets are $20. College student tickets are $15 with a valid ID and student tickets (age 18 and under) are $8. RaueNOW members enjoy 30% Off.

To purchase tickets, or for more information, please contact:

Raue Center For The Arts

26 N. Williams St.

Crystal Lake, IL 60014

Phone: 815-356-9212

www.rauecenter.org