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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, ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ
• 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
• "Robert Hayden: An Appreciation," Massachusetts Review, vol. 40, no. 4 (Winter 1999-2000)
• "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, ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ 1997
• Organizer, Conference on Race and Class, ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ 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, ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ
• 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
• ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ Research Council major grant recipient
• Afro-American Institute Grant
• ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ Research Council Discretionary Grant