Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1950-

views updated

GATES, Henry Louis, Jr. 1950-

PERSONAL: Born September 16, 1950, in Keyser, WV; son of Henry Louis and Pauline Augusta (Coleman) Gates; married Sharon Lynn Adams (a potter), September 1, 1979; children: Maude Augusta Adams, Elizabeth Helen-Claire. Education: Yale University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1973; Clare College, Cambridge, M.A., 1974, Ph.D., 1979. Religion: Episcopalian. Hobbies and other interests: Jazz, pocket billiards.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138. Agent—Carl Brandt, Brandt & Brandt Literary Agents, Inc., 1501 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.

CAREER: Anglican Mission Hospital, Kilimatinde, Tanzania, general anesthetist, 1970-71; John D. Rockefeller gubernatorial campaign, Charleston, WV, director of student affairs, 1971, director of research, 1972; Time, London Bureau, London, England, staff correspondent, 1973-75; Yale University, New Haven, CT, lecturer, 1976-79, assistant professor, 1979-84, associate professor of English and Afro-American Studies, 1984-85, director of undergraduate Afro-American studies, 1976-79; Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, professor of English, comparative literature, and African studies, 1985-88, W. E. B. DuBois Professor of Literature, 1988-90; Duke University, Durham, NC, John Spencer Bassett Professor of English and Literature, 1990—; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, W. E. B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities, professor of English, chair of Afro-American studies, and director of W. E. B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research, 1991—. Virginia Commonwealth, visiting professor, 1987; visiting scholar, Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Study, 2003-2004. Created the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television series The Image of the Black in the Western Imagination, 1982, and Wonders of the African World with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 1999.

MEMBER: Council on Foreign Relations, American Antiquarian Society, Union of Writers of the African Peoples, Association for Documentary Editing, African Roundtable, African Literature Association, Afro-American Academy, American Studies Association, Trans-Africa Forum Scholars Council, Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History (life member), Caribbean Studies Association, College Language Association (life member), Modern Language Association, Stone Trust, Zora Neale Hurston Society, Cambridge Scientific Club, American Civil Liberties Union National Advisory Council, German American Studies Association, National Coalition against Censorship, American Philosophical Society, Saturday Club, New England Historic Genealogical Society, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Carnegie Foundation Fellowship for Africa, 1970-71; Phelps Fellowship, Yale University, 1970-71; Mellon fellowships, Cambridge University, 1973-75, and National Humanities Center, 1989-90; grants from Ford Foundation, 1976-77 and 1984-85, and National Endowment for the Humanities, 1980-86; A. Whitney Griswold Fellowship, 1980; Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, 1981 and 1990; MacArthur Prize Fellowship, MacArthur Foundation, 1981-86; Yale Afro-American teaching prize, 1983; award from Whitney Humanities Center, 1983-85; Princeton University Council of the Humanities lectureship, 1985; Award for Creative Scholarship, Zora Neale Hurston Society, 1986; associate fellowship from W. E. B. DuBois Institute, Harvard University, 1987-88 and 1988-89; John Hope Franklin Prize honorable mention, American Studies Association, 1988; Woodrow Wilson National Fellow, 1988-89 and 1989-90; Candle Award, Morehouse College, 1989; American Book Award and Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Race Relations, both 1989, both for The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism; recipient of honorary degrees from many universities, including Dartmouth College, 1989, University of West Virginia, 1990, University of Rochester, 1990, Pratt Institute, 1990, University of Bridgeport, 1991 (declined), University of New Hampshire, 1991, Bryant College, 1992, Manhattan Community College, 1992, George Washington University, 1993, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1993, Williams College, 1993, Emory University, 1995, Colby College, 1995, Bard College, 1995, and Bates College, 1995; Richard Wright Lecturer, Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture, University of Pennsylvania, 1990; Potomac State College Alumni Award, 1991; Bellagio Conference Center Fellowship, 1992; Clarendon Lecturer, Oxford University, 1992; Best New Journal of the Year award (in the humanities and the social sciences), Association of American Publishers, 1992; elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993; Golden Plate Achievement Award, 1993; African-American Students Faculty Award, 1993; George Polk Award for Social Commentary, 1993; Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, 1994, for Colored People: A Memoir; Lillian Smith Book Award, 1994; West Virginian of the Year, 1995; Humanities Award, West Virginia Humanities Council, 1995; Ethics Award, Tikkun (magazine), 1996; Distinguished Editorial Achievement, Critical Inquiry, 1996; voted one of the twenty-five most influential Americans, Time magazine, 1997; National Humanities Medal, 1998; elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1999; named honorary citizen of Benin, 2001; W. D. Weatherford Award.

WRITINGS:

Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1987.

The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1988.

Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (essays), Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Colored People: A Memoir, Knopf (New York, NY), 1994.

Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex: Hate Speech, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Cornel West) The Future of the Race, Knopf (New York, NY), 1996.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, Random House (New York, NY), 1997.

Wonders of the African World, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Cornel West) The African-American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Country, Free Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Author of text) Come Sunday: Photographs by Thomas Roma, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 2002.

Back to Africa, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2002.

The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers, BasicCivitas Books (New York, NY), 2003.

America behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans, Warner (New York, NY), 2004.

EDITOR

(And author of introduction) Black Is the Color of the Cosmos: Charles T. Davis's Essays on Afro-American Literature and Culture, 1942-1981, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1982.

(And author of introduction) Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, Random House (New York, NY), 1983.

(And author of introduction) Black Literature and Literary Theory, Methuen (New York, NY), 1984.

(And author of introduction, with Charles T. Davis) The Slave's Narrative: Texts and Contexts, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

(Editor, with James Gibbs and Ketu H. Katrak) Wole Soyinka: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1986.

(And author of introduction) "Race," Writing, and Difference, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1986.

(And author of introduction) The Classic Slave Narratives, New American Library (New York, NY), 1987.

(And author of introduction) In the House of Oshugbo: A Collection of Essays on Wole Soyinka, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1988.

(Series editor) The Oxford-Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, thirty volumes, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1988.

W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1989.

James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, Vintage (New York, NY), 1989.

Three Classic African-American Novels, Vintage (New York, NY), 1990.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, introduction by Mary Helen Washington, Harper (New York, NY), 1990.

Zora Neale Hurston, Jonah's Gourd Vine, introduction by Rita Dove, Harper (New York, NY), 1990.

Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse, introduction by Ishmael Reed, Harper (New York, NY), 1990.

Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, introduction by Arnold Rampersad, Harper (New York, NY), 1990.

Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, Meridian Book (New York, NY), 1990.

Voodoo Gods of Haiti, introduction by Ishmael Reed, Harper (New York, NY), 1991.

The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, ten-volume supplement, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1991.

(With Randall K. Burkett and Nancy Hall Burkett) Black Biography, 1790-1950: A Cumulative Index, Chadwyck-Healey (Teaneck, NJ), 1991.

(With George Bass) Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, Mulebone: A Comedy of Negro Life, HarperPerennial (New York, NY), 1991.

Bearing Witness: Selections from African-American Autobiography in the Twentieth Century, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 1991.

(With Anthony Appiah) Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Anthony Appiah) Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Anthony Appiah) Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Anthony Appiah) Richard Wright: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Anthony Appiah) Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Anthony Appiah) Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1993.

The Amistad Chronology of African-American History from 1445-1990, Amistad (New York, NY), 1993.

(And annotations) Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies, Library of America, 1994.

(With Anthony Appiah) The Dictionary of Global Culture, Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.

The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston, Harper-Collins (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Anthony Appiah) Identities, University of Chicago (Chicago, IL), 1996.

(With N. Y. McKay) The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, Norton (New York, NY), 1996.

Ann Petry: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1997.

Chinua Achebe: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1997.

Harriet A. Jacobs: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1997.

Ralph Ellison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1997.

Wole Soyinka: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1997.

Frederick Douglass: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Amistad (New York, NY), 1997.

The Essential Soyinka: A Reader, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1998.

(Coeditor) Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five Slave Narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772-1815, Civitas (Washington, DC), 1998.

(Coeditor) Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

(Coeditor) The Civitas Anthology of African-American Slave Narratives, Civitas/Counterpoint (Washington, DC), 1999.

Wonders of the African World, Random House (New York, NY), 1999.

Slave Narratives, Library of America (New York, NY), 2000.

Harvard Guide to African-American History, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2001.

Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Hannah Crafts, The Bondwoman's Narrative, Warner (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Anthony Appiah) Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience, Running Press (New York, NY), 2003.

In the House of Oshugbo: Critical Essays on Wole Soyinka, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

(With Anthony Appiah) Transition 96, Soft Skull Press, 2004.

(With Anthony Appiah) Transition 97/98, Soft Skull Press, 2004.

(With Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham) African-American Lives, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Also editor, with Anthony Appiah, of "Amistad Critical Studies in African-American Literature" series, 1993, and editor of the Black Periodical Literature Project. Advisory editor of "Contributions to African and Afro-American Studies" series for Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), "Critical Studies in Black Life and Culture" series for Garland Press, and "Perspectives on the Black World" series for G. K. Hall (Boston, MA). General editor of A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory; Middle-Atlantic Writers Association Review. Coeditor of Transition. Associate editor of Journal of American Folklore. Member of editorial boards including, Critical Inquiry, Studies in American Fiction, Black American Literature Forum, PMLA, Stanford Humanities Review, and Yale Journal of Law and Liberation.

SIDELIGHTS: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is one of the best-known humanities professors in the United States, and one of the most respected and controversial scholars in the field of African-American studies. Educated at Yale and a professor at Harvard, he had a humble start in Keyser, West Virginia, where the majority of the population worked for a paper mill. The town was a strictly segregated community in his youth, but Gates remembered its strong sense of community in a mostly positive light in his memoir Colored People. Gates's father worked as a loader at the mill, and also as a janitor for the telephone company. Young Gates excelled in school, where integration occurred relatively smoothly. During the tumultuous 1960s, Gates was a young student who was gaining an awareness of Africa from studying current events. In 1968, he graduated as the class valedictorian, delivering a commencement address with a militant tone. He moved on to Potomac State College of West Virginia University the following autumn, with the thought of going on to medical school. A professor named Duke Anthony Whitmore saw the spark of genius in Gates, however, and encouraged him to apply to top-tier schools. Gates was soon accepted at Yale University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1973. He then traveled to Cambridge University to earn a master of arts degree. He began his teaching career at Yale, and distinguished himself early on by discovering and reissuing an 1859 novel written by a black woman, titled Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. Publication of this work sparked considerable interest in recovering other works by early black women writers.

Gates moved on to take a post at Cornell University, and during his tenure there he published the multivolume Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, a landmark work that showed black women had written their own stories more than had ever been previously acknowledged. In 1988, he became the W. E. B. DuBois Professor of Literature at Cornell, becoming the first African-American man to hold an endowed chair at that institution. His star continued to rise as he moved on to a position at Duke and then to Harvard University, where he was W. E. B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard and head of its Afro-American Studies program. Gates breathed new life and enthusiasm into the program, which at the time of his arrival had very few students and only one full-time professor. He hired high-profile lecturers such as film director Spike Lee and authors Jamaica Kincaid and Wole Soyinka. Under Gates's leadership, the number of students in the program tripled within a few years.

Gates had detractors as well as admirers, however. Some of his colleagues found him to be insufficiently Afro-centric. He engaged in certain high-profile activities that were regarded by some as inappropriate self-promotion, for example, publicly testifying at the obscenity trial of rap group 2 Live Crew, stating that their extreme lyrics were merely part of an African oral tradition. Still, even those who objected to Gates's flashy public activities rarely argued with his credentials, or denied his many important contributions to Afro-American scholarship, as he has written and edited numerous books of literary and social criticism. According to James Olney in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gates's mission is to reorder and reinterpret "the literary and critical history of Afro-Americans in the context of a tradition that is fully modern but also continuous with Yoruba modes of interpretation that are firmly settled and at home in the world of black Americans."

In his approach to literary criticism, Gates is avowedly eclectic and defines himself as a centrist who rejects extreme positions on either end of the spectrum. Neither the white, Western tradition nor the African tradition is superior; they should coexist and inform each other, in Gates's view. Like the American novelist Ralph Ellison, Gates sees the fluid, indeed porous, relationship between black and white culture in the United States. Gates argues that our conception of the literary canon needs to be enlarged accordingly.

Black Literature and Literary Theory, which Gates edited, is considered by many reviewers to be an important contribution to the study of black literature. Calling it "an exciting, important volume," Reed Way Dasenbrock wrote in World Literature Today: "It is a collection of essays . . . that attempts to explore the relevance of contemporary literary theory, especially structuralism and poststructuralism, to African and Afro-American literature. . . . Anyone seriously interested in contemporary critical theory, in Afro-American and African literature, and in black and African studies generally will need to read and absorb this book." R. G. O'Meally wrote in Choice that in Black Literature and Literary Theory Gates "brings together thirteen superb essays in which the most modern literary theory is applied to black literature of Africa and the U.S. . . . For those interested in [the] crucial issues—and for those interested in fresh and challenging readings of key texts in black literature—this book is indispensable." Finally, Terry Eagleton remarked in the New York Times Book Review that "the most thought-provoking contributions to [this] collection are those that not only enrich our understanding of black literary works but in doing so implicitly question the authoritarianism of a literary 'canon.'"

One of Gates's best-known works is Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars, in which he discusses gender, literature, and multiculturalism and argues for greater diversity in American arts and letters. Writing in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Sanford Pinsker noted that according to Gates "the cultural right . . . is guilty of 'intellectual protectionism,' of defending the best that has been thought and said within the Western Tradition because they are threatened by America's rapidly changing demographic profile; while the cultural left 'demands changes to accord with population shifts in gender and ethnicity.' Loose Canons makes it clear that Gates has problems with both positions." "The society we have made," Gates argues in Loose Canons, "simply won't survive without the values of tolerance. And cultural tolerance comes to nothing without cultural understanding. . . . If we relinquish the ideal of America as a plural nation, we've abandoned the very experiment that America represents." Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Kirsch praised the humor and wit that infused Gates's arguments. Loose Canons, Kirsch concluded, is "the work of a man who has mastered the arcane politics and encoded language of the canon makers; it's an arsenal of ideas in the cultural wars. But it is also the outpouring of a humane, witty and truly civilized mind."

Colored People: A Memoir played to a wider audience than did Loose Canons. In it, Gates recalls his youth in Piedmont, West Virginia, at a time when the town was becoming integrated. It "explores the tension between the racially segregated past and the integrated modernity that the author himself represents," commented David Lionel Smith in America. While affirming the progress brought by desegregation, Gates also laments the loss of the strong, united community feeling that segregation created among blacks—a feeling epitomized in the annual all-black picnic sponsored by the paper mill that provided jobs to most of Piedmont's citizens. Numerous reviewers pointed out the gentle, reminiscent tone of Gates's narrative, but some considered this a weakness in light of the momentous changes Gates lived through. Smith remarked: "From an author of Gates's sophistication, we expect more than unreflective nostalgia." Comparing it to other recent African-American memoirs and autobiographies, he concluded, "Some of them address social issues more cogently and others are more self-analytical, but none is more vivid and pleasant to read than Colored People." Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Richard Eder affirmed that Colored People was an "affecting, beautifully written and morally complex memoir," and Joyce Carol Oates, in her LondonReview of Books assessment, described it as an "eloquent document to set beside the grittier contemporary testimonies of black male urban memoirists; in essence a work of filial gratitude, paying homage to such virtues as courage, loyalty, integrity, kindness; a pleasure to read and, in the best sense, inspiring."

Gates wrote The Future of the Race with Cornel West, a professor of Afro-American studies at Harvard University. This work contains an essay by Gates, an essay by West, and two essays by black intellectual W. E. B. DuBois, the latter of which are preceded by a foreword by Gates. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Gerald Early noted: "The question . . . that the authors wish to answer—what is their duty to the lower or less fortunate class of blacks?—indicates the black bourgeoisie's inability to understand precisely what their success means to themselves or blacks generally." Early also observed that while "the pieces seem hastily written," Gates's essay is "engagingly witty and journalistic" as well as "charming and coherent."

Gates offers insight into the position of the black male in American society in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man. Through a series of discussions recorded over several years and documented in various magazine articles, Gates brings a broad cross-section of African-American hopes and ideals to the reader's attention. Interviewees include such major black American figures as James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Colin Powell, and Bill T. Jones. Writing in Library Journal, Michael A. Lutes referred to Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man as a "riveting commentary on race in America."

A belief that tolerance proceeds from education and familiarity led Gates to devote himself to working with a variety of media and corporate resources to enlighten the general public about African-American heritage and contributions to society. His efforts in this realm range from writing a set of booklets about black history, distributed at McDonald's restaurants, to creating multi-part television documentaries on black heritage for the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). He also worked with a team of other scholars to fulfil a dream of the late W. E. B. DuBois: to create an answer to the Encyclopedia Britannica, called Encyclopedia Africana that would take into consideration African influences and contributions to the world. Working with Microsoft, Gates helped to create the CD-ROM version of the Encyclopedia Africana, and he also launched Africana.com, a Web site that was later sold to AOL Time Warner.

Gates also brought his message to the masses with his PBS television series, Wonders of the African World with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In this program, Gates took viewers on a journey through Africa that illustrated the remains of the great cultures that once flourished on that continent. Contemporary Africa was also explored, and Gates shared his personal experience of the journey. In making the series, Gates hoped to "debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived," as Lorraine Eaton of the Virginia Pilot quoted him as saying. He continued: "In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art."

Gates continued to bring forth newly discovered works by African Americans of early generations, such as The Bondwoman's Narrative, a melodramatic story of a slave's life written by Hannah Crafts. More significant than the literary content of the book are the facts and attitudes it reveals within the slaves' world, and the fact that its author was most likely an escaped slave herself. He looked into the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, the first published black poet in the United States, in The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers. Reviewing the volume for Booklist, Vanessa Bush commented, "Gates brings scholarly insight and a love of black literature to this examination of how Wheatley, the first published African-American poet, has survived the judgment of past and contemporary critics." When first published in 1773, Wheatley's poems stirred up questions of their authenticity among those who could not believe a black person could create poetry. When their authenticity was established, Wheatley's work was attacked on other grounds. "In this slim, lively volume, Gates extols Wheatley's enduring literary significance and Jefferson's contribution to spurring a tradition of black literature that was first aimed at proving equality and came to signify a black aesthetic," concluded Bush.

The stellar make-up of Harvard's African-American studies department was diminished when Anthony Appiah and Cornel West, two of the department's top scholars, announced they would be moving to other universities after disagreements with Harvard's leadership on the direction of the program. Gates chose to remain at Harvard to continue to try to keep the program vital and forward-looking. He was instrumental in restructuring the department, adding five new faculty members, including an African scholar, a linguist, and even an expert on hip-hop. Gates did, however, take a year's leave from Harvard to join the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey—a socalled "think tank" most famous for its association with Albert Einstein.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Black Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2003.

Contemporary Southern Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 67: Modern American Critics since 1955, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988.

Notable Black American Men, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

PERIODICALS

America, December 31, 1994, p. 24.

American Spectator, April-May, 1994, p. 69.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 21, 1999, Michael Skube, "Harvard Don on a Mission to Show Africa in All Its Glory," p. K1; December 6, 2000, John Head, interview with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., p. D1.

Black Issues Book Review, November-December, 2003, Herb Boyd, review of The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers, p. 66.

Black Issues in Higher Education, January 17, 2002, "Rift between Harvard Scholars, President Makes National News," p. 14; February 28, 2002, "Gates Ponders Move to Princeton," p. 17; June 5, 2003, "Harvard's Gates to be Visiting Scholar at Princeton Think Tank," p. 14.

Booklist, September 1, 2000, Vanessa Bush, review of The African-American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Country, p. 3; February 15, 2001, Nora Harris, review of The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, p. 1172; November 15, 2001, Candace Smith, review of Wonders of the African World, p. 588; June 1, 2003, Vanessa Bush, review of The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, p. 1728.

Boston Globe, October 20, 1990, p. 3; May 12, 1991, p. 12; April 23, 1992, p. 70; November 7, 1992, p. 15; December 1, 1992, p. 23; April 29, 1993, p. 53; May 29, 1994, p. A13; April, 2002, Greg Lalas, review of The Bondwoman's Narrative, p. 161.

Boston Herald, April 9, 2002, Dana Bisbee, review of The Bondwoman's Narrative, p. 45.

Callaloo, spring, 1991.

Chicago Tribune, February 18, 1993, section 5, p. 3; November 18, 1993, section 1, p. 32; July 17, 1994, section 14, p. 3; August 24, 1994, section 5, p. 1.

Choice, May, 1985; March, 1995, p. 1059.

Christian Century, January 19, 1994, pp. 53-54.

Christian Science Monitor, April 10, 1992, p. 11; June 7, 1994, p. 13.

Commonweal, December 18, 1992, pp. 22-23.

Criticism, winter, 1994, pp. 155-161.

Emerge, November, 1990, p. 76.

Guardian (London, England), July 6, 2002, Maya Jaggi, "Henry the First," p. 20.

Humanities Magazine, July-August, 1991, pp. 4-10; March-April, 2002, interview with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., p. 6.

International Herald Tribune, July 17, 2003, Sara Rimer, "Harvard Refocuses Afro-American Unit," p. 7.

Jet, August 27, 2001, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Named Honorary Citizen of Benin, p. 31; January 21, 2002, "Harvard University President Meets with Black Scholars to Mend Rift There," p. 36.

Journal of American Ethnic History, fall, 2000, Donald R. Wright, review of Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, p. 78.

Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2003, review of America behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans, p. 1207.

Library Journal, February, 1997; November 1, 2000, review of The African-American Century, p. 102; November 15, 2000, Thomas J. Davis, review of The African-American Century, p. 80; June 1, 2002, Roger A. Berger, review of The Bondwoman's Narrative, p. 147.

London Review of Books, July 21, 1994, pp. 22-23; January 12, 1995, p. 14.

Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1990, p. A20; March 25, 1992, p. E2; June 3, 1994, p. E1; February 6, 2000, review of Africana, p. E1.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 8, 1994, pp. 3, 12.

New Leader, September 12, 1994, pp. 12-13.

New Literary History, autumn, 1991.

New Republic, July 4, 1994, p. 33; June 16, 1997.

New Statesman & Society, February 10, 1995, p. 43.

New York Review of Books, November 2, 2000, George M. Frederickson, review of Slave Narratives, p. 61.

New York Times, December 6, 1989, p. B14; April 1, 1990, section 6, p. 25; June 3, 1992, p. B7; May 16, 1994, p. C16; May 8, 2003, Karen W. Arenson, "Harvard Scholar to Visit Princeton Institute," p. A26; July 16, 2003, Sara Rimer, "Harvard Scholar Rebuilds African Studies Department," p. A16.

New York Times Book Review, December 9, 1984; August 9, 1992, p. 21; June 19, 1994, p. 10; April 21, 1996, p. 7; February 9, 1997; May 12, 2002, Mia Bay, review of The Bondwoman's Narrative, p. 30.

New York Times Magazine, April 1, 1990.

Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), July 28, 2002, Margaret Bernstein, review of The Bondwoman's Narrative, p. J11.

Publishers Weekly, October 16, 2000, review of The African-American Century, p. 57; April 1, 2002, review of The Bondwoman's Narrative, p. 53.

Rocky Mountain News, May 10, 2002, review of The Bondwoman's Narrative, p. 29D.

San Francisco Chronicle, May 20, 2002, Steven Winn, review of The Bondwoman's Narrative, p. D1.

Seattle Times, May 5, 2002, John Gamino, review of The Bondwoman's Narrative, p. K9.

Spectator, February 18, 1995, pp. 31-32.

Time, April 22, 1991, pp. 16, 18; May 23, 1994, p. 73.

Times Literary Supplement, May 17, 1985; February 24, 1995, p. 26.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), July 17, 1994, pp. 3, 5; October 9, 1994, p. 11.

U. S. News and World Report, March, 1992; September 18, 2000, Matthew Benjamin, "Africana Dot Sold," p. 64.

Village Voice, July 5, 1994, p. 82.