Patchwork Nation

Thursday November 11 at 6:30pm

Main Stage / 60 minutes

In a climate of culture wars and economic uncertainty, America is often reduced to simple dichotomies: red state versus blue state, left versus right. Journalist Dante Chinni and political geographer James Gimpel – the team behind the book, OUR PATCHWORK NATION: The Surprising Truth About Real America – reveal their surprising “12 community” hypothesis about American society, and what it means for our culture now, and in the future.

Using on-the-ground reporting - much of it conducted here in Philadelphia - and statistical analysis, they get beyond the generalizations and talking heads to reveal a rich picture of our nation’s political and social predilections, and will analyze November's election results to show what influenced the results and where America may be headed politically.

Since the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, Dante Chinni has been the correspondent for the Patchwork Nation project, a collaboration among The Christian Science Monitor, the PBS NewsHour, and PBS member stations that is funded by the Knight Foundation. He has covered politics and the media for more than a decade and his work has appeared in Newsweek, The New Republic, The Washington Post Magazine, and other publications. A native of Detroit and a graduate of Michigan State University, he currently lives in Washington DC.

James Gimpel, Ph.D., is a professor of government at the University of Maryland, College Park. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

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