Emory University News Release

Release date: Jan. 3, 2003
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0644 or dhammac@emory.edu

New Faculty Enhance Emory's African-American Literature Scholarship

African-American scholars Yusef Komunyakaa and Michael Awkward join Emory faculty to enhance literature and research. (Professor Awkward's photo courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania)

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, and noted African-American literature scholar Michael Awkward, are joining the faculty of Emory University. These scholars add to the already strong Emory core in African-American literature and research.

Awkward will serve as the Longstreet Professor of English and African-American Studies and Komunyakaa will be the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Poetry.

"The appointments of Michael Awkward and Yusef Komunyakaa are enormously important to Emory's creative and intellectual commitment to the literary arts and to scholarship in the humanities. The entire university community will be greatly enriched by their presence," says Interim Provost Howard O. Hunter. "For some time Emory has been developing faculty and library resources in poetry and African-American studies. These professors are, in a sense, capstones to a sustained building program that has now resulted in one of the finest collections of writers and scholars in the world."

Because of Emory's location in Atlanta, a center of African-American life, thought and culture, the university considers its growth in African-American studies to reflect its engagement with its community, according to Emory College Interim Dean Robert Paul.

Emory ranked second among national universities in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education's most recent annual rankings of percentages of black faculty and overall racial diversity.

These appointments establish Emory's English department as one of the preeminent centers in the country for the study and creation of African-American literature, complementing an English faculty that already includes poet Natasha Trethewey, scholars Lawrence Jackson, Frances Smith Foster and Mark Sanders. This core group is augmented by well-known journalist and author Nathan McCall in journalism and literary scholar Rudolph Byrd in the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts.

Komunyakaa, currently a professor at Princeton University, is considered one of the top living American poets, says Jim Grimsley, chairman of Emory's creative writing program.

Komunyakaa is the author of nine collections of poetry. He received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Prize for his book "Neon Vernacular" (1984). His published works include "Pleasure Dome" (2001), "Thieves of Paradise"(1998), and "Dien Cai Dau" (1988). He also wrote a collection of prose, "Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews and Commentaries," and co-edited "The Jazz Poetry Anthology" (1991). Among his honors are the William Faulkner Prize, the Thomas Forcade Award, the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize, the Levinson Prize from Poetry Magazine and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1999 he was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Michael Awkward specializes in contemporary African-American literary, cultural and gender studies, particularly how race and community impact representations of black Americans in literature, music and other cultural forms. He currently is professor of English and former director of the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously he was an English professor and director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Awkward is the author of "Scenes of Instruction: A Memoir" (2000), "Negotiating Difference: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Positionality" (1995), and "Inspiring Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women's Novels" (1989), and editor of "New Essays on 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'" (1990). His works-in-progress are "Philadelphia Freedoms: Representing Post-Civil Rights Black Identities" and "Black Postmodernity: New Essays."

The university's specialists in African-American literature now include:

• Natasha Trethewey, an award-winning poet, who joined the faculty last year;
• Lawrence Jackson, author of the first biography of Ralph Ellison, "Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius," who joined Emory this academic year;
• Frances Smith Foster, co-editor of "The Norton Anthology of African American Literature" and "The Oxford Companion to African American Literature," who teaches courses in English and women's studies and directs the Emory Institute for Women's Studies;
• Mark Sanders, a specialist in 20th-century American literature--particularly the Harlem Renaissance--and director of African-American studies;
• Rudolph Byrd, a professor in the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts who was chairman of the "Lynching and Racial Violence in America: Histories and Legacies" conference committee;
• Nathan McCall, an author and former reporter for The Washington Post, who teaches in Emory's journalism program, including courses on African-American images in the media.