Poet and Yale professor of English and African-American studies Claudia Rankine ’86 has been named a MacArthur fellow for 2016. Calling her “a critical voice in current conversations about racial violence,” the MacArthur Foundation says her poetry, essays, lectures, and short films illuminate “the emotional and psychic tensions that mark the experiences of many living in 21st-century America.” Rankine received a Williams Bicentennial Medal in 2015. She is one of 23 people from around the world selected to receive this year’s fellowship, which includes a five-year, $625,000 grant.