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Houston A. Baker Jr.

ヒューストン・A・ベイカー・ジュニア

Houston A. Baker Jr.

Profile

Gender
Male
Born
1943-03-22 （Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.）
Nationality
United States
Languages
English
Residence History
Louisville, Kentucky (birth and youth) → Washington, D.C. (Howard University) → Los Angeles (UCLA) → New Haven (Yale University) → Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) → Durham (Duke University) → Nashville (Vanderbilt University)

Career

Occupations
Writer, Scholar, Professor, Literary critic
Active Years
1970-
Affiliations
Vanderbilt University, Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, Yale University
Memberships
Modern Language Association (MLA), Organizations in African American studies
Influenced By
Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison
Influenced
Richard J. Lane (literary theorist), Hortense Spillers (literary and cultural critic), Henry Louis Gates Jr. (comparative literature and African American studies scholar)

Education

Howard University
Department of English
Degree: A.B.
Country: United States
Received A.B. in English
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
English (Victorian literature)
Degree: M.A., Ph.D.
Country: United States
Earned M.A. and Ph.D. in Victorian literature

Awards

American Book Award
2009
Work: Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era
Organization: Before Columbus Foundation (American Book Award)
Result: 受賞

Awards & Nominations

Works

Major Works

The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism

1980 Literary criticism

Argues for situating black aesthetics within historical contexts and adopts an interdisciplinary approach to read African American texts as 'in motion', critiquing earlier idealized accounts of black aesthetic formation.

black aesthetichistory and contextinterdisciplinarity

Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory

1984 Literary criticism / Studies of music and culture

Develops a vernacular theory treating blues music as a foundational matrix for African American artistic production, linking orality and literary forms and introducing concepts like 'blues geographies.'

bluesoralitycultural matrix

Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance

1987 Literary history / Criticism

Challenges Euro-American models of modernism for understanding the Harlem Renaissance and re-evaluates Afro-American modernism by situating literature in conversation with contemporaneous music, art, and philosophy.

Harlem Renaissancemodernismdialogue between music and literature

Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing

1993 Literary criticism / Feminist studies

Analyzes Afro-American women's writing in relation to orality and autobiography, exploring poetics and expressions of spirituality in their texts.

women's writingoralityautobiography

Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era

2009 Criticism / Social commentary

Critically examines black intellectuals and public responsibility, arguing there is a gap between Civil Rights-era ideals and contemporary intellectual practice.

black intellectualspublicnessresponsibility

The Trouble with Post-Blackness

2015 Social criticism / Literary criticism

A critical examination of the concept of 'post-blackness' and contemporary issues of black identity and cultural representation.

post-blacknessidentitycultural representation

Bibliography

  • Long Black Song: Essays in Black American Literature and Culture (1972)
  • Singers of Daybreak: Studies in Black American Literature (1974)
  • A Many-Colored Coat of Dreams: The Poetry of Countee Cullen (1974)
  • No Matter Where You Travel, You Still Be Black (poems, 1979)
  • The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism (1980)
  • Spirit Run (poems, 1982)
  • Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory (1984)
  • Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (1987)
  • Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing (1993)
  • Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy (1993)
  • Turning South Again: Re-Thinking Modernism/Re-Reading Booker T (2001)
  • Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era (2009)
  • The Trouble with Post-Blackness (2015)

Style & Themes

Literary Style
interdisciplinarycombines orality and textual analysistheory grounded in historical contextat times polemical and provocative
Recurring Motifs
bluesoralityautobiographyexploration of black aestheticsreconsideration of the South and modernism

Legacy

Houston A. Baker Jr. is a major figure in African American literary studies whose work expanded understandings of black aesthetics by foregrounding blues and orality. He founded the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania, served as MLA president and editor of American Literature, and has had both significant scholarly influence and public controversies (notably over comments during the 2006 Duke lacrosse case).

Academic Societies

  • Modern Language Association (MLA)
  • Academic groups in African American studies

Archives

  • University of Pennsylvania archives / Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture
  • Vanderbilt University special collections

In Popular Culture

  • Comments during the Duke lacrosse case drew widespread media attention and debate beyond academia

Quotes

  • I had been discriminated against and called 'Nigger' enough to think that what America needed was a good Black Revolution.
    Source: Memoir and interviews; summarized in I Don't Hate the South (2007) and related writings (2007)
  • We must 'journey back'—to re-affirm the richness and complexity of black aesthetic history.
    Source: The Journey Back (1980) (1980)

Trivia

  • Founded the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987.
  • Served as president of the Modern Language Association (MLA).
  • Served as editor of the journal American Literature.
  • Generated controversy over comments related to the 2006 Duke lacrosse case.