BA, cum laude with honors in English, Yale University, 1972; MA, English, University of Chicago, 1974; PhD, English, University of Chicago, 1987
Associate professor with tenure, Department of English, Colgate University
Visiting associate professor, Department of English, Boston University
Associate professor, Department of English, University of North Carolina
Fulbright Fellow, Department of English, Universite Omar Bongo, Gabon, Africa, "Revolution: American Literature in Black and White from the Mid-Eighteenth Century to the Civil War"
Seminar for students (Licence and Maitrise level) at the USIA Cultural Center Instructor in English, Department of English, Philosophy, and Languages, Arkansas State University
Lecturer, Composition department, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle
Lecturer, Department of English, Howard University
American literature (colonial through late 19th century); colonial American literature and culture; American puritanism; African American literature and intellectual history
American culture; France and Francophone cultures
Black Heart: The Moral Life of Recent African-American Letters (New York, Peter Lang, 2005)
Co-author, Best Literature By and About Blacks (Gale Research, Farmington, Michigan, 2002)
"The 'Joseph Story' as Slave Narrative: On Genesis and Exodus as Prototypes for Early Black Anglophone Writing" in African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush (New York: Continuum, 2000), pp. 221-235
"Henry Louis Gates, Sterling Brown, and the Professional Languages of African-American Literary Criticism" in Reconstructing History: The Emergence of a New Historical Society, ed. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn (New York: Routledge, 1999).pp. 119-138
"Prestigious colleges ignore the inadequate intellectual achievement of black students," The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 2002, p. B11-B12
"Juneteenth and Ralph Ellison's Impact on American Literature," The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Autumn 1999, pp. 129-131
"A Stranger in the Village," Dissent, Summer 1998, pp. 75-80
Reprint of "A Stranger in the Village," Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Fall 1998., pp. 88-93
"Moll Flanders in LA," Times Literary Supplement, August 28, 1998. Issue 49: 78, p. 16
"Growing Up in University Circle," The Case Western Reserve Alumni Magazine, August 1996
"Model Minorities," The Massachusetts Review, Spring 1996, pp. 137-147
"Farrakhan's Middle-Class Revival Comes to Howard," Dissent, Spring 1996, pp. 79-84
"Coming of Age in Michigan," Carolina Quarterly, Winter 1995, pp. 16-37
"Leaving the Folk," Harper's Magazine, October 1995, pp. 76-86
"Phillis Wheatley, Americanization, the Sublime, and the Romance of America," Style, vol. 27, No. 2, (Summer 1993), pp. 194-222
"Sula and the Discourse of the Folk Tradition," Cultural Studies, May 1995, pp. 270-291
"Phillis Wheatley and Literary Americanization," American Quarterly 44, Number 2, June 1992, pp. 163-191
"Nationalist Themes in the Preaching of Jupiter Hammon," Early American Literature vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 123-139
Organizer, Conference on Black Intellectuals, Colgate University 1997
Organizer, Conference on Race and Class, Colgate University 1996
Organizer, First Conference Early American Institute, University of Michigan
Interviews on National Public Radio’s Soundings
Academic lectures at L’Université Chieckh Antih Diop, Smith College, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina Reader, Greenwood Press, University of Michigan Press, Genre
Member, Executive Committee, MLA Division for the Study of American Literature to 1800 (1995 – 1997)
Visiting Full Professor, Department of English, L'Universite Stendhal, France
Summer co-director, "Ideas and Actions in Early Abolitionism"; five-week NEH Summer Seminar for High School Students, Colgate University
NY Fellow, Institute on Race and Social Division, Boston University
Awarded, Lupton Grant, College of Arts and Sciences, University of North Carolina
Fellow, Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship for Minorities
Fellow, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park
North Carolina Fellow, Society for the Humanities
Cornell University (Declined) Fulbright Teaching-Research Fellowship
Gabon Picker Fellow
Colgate University Research Council major grant recipient
Afro-American Institute Grant
Colgate University Research Council Discretionary Grant
