Acclaimed essayist and cultural critic Gerald L. Early, Ph.D., will give this year’s Phi Beta Kappa Lecture for the Assembly Series at 4 p.m. April 10 in Graham Chapel.
His talk, which is free and open to the public, will be on “Baldwin and the Bosporus or Talking About Black History Month to Students in Turkey.” The Baldwin reference is to James Baldwin, one of the most influential black writers in America.
Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters and professor of English, African & African American studies and American cultural studies, as well as director of the Center for Humanities, all in Arts & Sciences.
Last fall, Early received the Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Service to the Humanities, a recognition by the national body for significant contributions in the humanities.
From Muhammad Ali to Motown, from Miles Davis to Sammy Davis Jr., he writes on the modern American condition from a personal perspective.
From his vantage point as an African-American baby boomer, Early edited a volume of essays, “This Is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s,” and wrote “One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture.”
As a jazz enthusiast, he compiled the volume of essays “Miles Davis and American Culture.”
“The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture” sprang from his love of boxing and won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. The book was a follow-up to “Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture,” which Early published in 1989.
His chronicle of fatherhood, “Daughters: On Family and Fatherhood,” was a semi-finalist for the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award.
That same year, he published “How the War in the Streets Is Won: Poems on the Quest of Love and Faith.”
“Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity and the Ambivalence of Assimilation,” which Early edited in 1993, received the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights.
Baseball is another favorite topic for Early, and his knowledge of that sport, as well as of jazz, made him sought after as a consultant and featured expert in Ken Burns’ award-winning documentaries on the subjects. Early also worked with Burns on a profile of Jack Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight champion.
In addition to writing accolades, Early has received two Grammy Award nominations for album notes for “Yes I Can! The Sammy Davis Jr. Story,” and “Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words From the Harlem Renaissance.”
Early is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a commentator for National Public Radio.
A faculty member since 1982, Early became a full professor in 1990 and has taught in a number of academic departments in Arts & Sciences and served as director of American culture studies and what was formerly called African and Afro-American studies.
A native of Philadelphia, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 and master’s and doctoral degrees from Cornell University in 1980 and 1982, respectively.
For more information, call 935-4620 or visit assemblyseries.wustl.edu.