African American Literature Scholar to Give Lecture at Williams College

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., April 12, 2001 — Kim Benston, William R. Kenan Professor of English at Haverford College and one of the country’s foremost scholars and critics of African-American literature will speak on “Black Dada Nihilismus: Phillis Wheatley, Malcolm X, and the Politics of Conversion” on Monday, April 16, at 8 p.m. in Griffin Hall, Room 3. The event, sponsored by the English department, isfree and open to the public.

Benston has written several books on topics ranging from “Baraka: The Renegade and the Mask,” and “Speaking for You: Ralph Ellison’s Cultural Vision” to “Performing Blackness: Enacting African-American Modernism.”

Benston has also written dozens of articles on African-American literature including “Facing Tradition: Revisionary Scenes in African-American Literature,” “Controlling the Dialectical Deacon: The Critique of Historicism in Invisible Man,” “Tragic Aspects of the Blues,” and “Toni Morrison’s Africanicity.” Benston is a member of the Modern Language Association, Shakespeare Association, and Renaissance Society of America. He is on the advisory boards of the Black Fiction Project, Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, and the Center for Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.

Benston has won numerous awards for his scholarship, including an NEH Fellowship in 1990 and a Mellon Fellowship in 1981, as well as several awards for outstanding teaching, including the Lindback Foundation Teaching Award. Benston also garnered five graduate fellowships during his post graduate studies.

Benston earned his degree in English from Yale University in 1974, where he also earned his Ph.D. in 1980. Benston taught at Yale from 1978 through 1984 and has taught at Haverford since 1984.

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