“One Misstep from Free Fall: Living the Black Middle Class in Harlem” Bruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch will discuss and read from their book, Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family (Columbia University, 2017). This “sociological memoir” explores the tides of change that pushed blacks forward through the twentieth century—the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, the early civil rights victories, the Black Power and Black Arts movements—and the forces that ravaged black communities, including Haynes's own. Haynes, Professor of Sociology at U.C. Davis and an authority on race and urban communities, along with freelance writer Syma Solovitch, deliver a fresh take on the American mobility saga. Bruce D. Haynes is professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Red Lines, Black Spaces: The Politics of Race and Space in a Black Middle-Class Suburb (2001) and the coeditor of The Ghetto: Contemporary Global Issues and Controversies (2011), and The Soul of Judaism: Jews of African Descent in America (forthcoming August 2018 NYU Press). Syma Solovitch is a freelance writer, developmental editor, and educator. This is her first book. The Interdisciplinary Seminar Series You’re cordially invited to join us for the Aoki Center’s Spring 2018 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. You’ll have the opportunity to learn from, and discuss with, interdisciplinary scholars who will present their research and works in progress which are inspired by, and build upon, critical race studies.