Houston A. Baker Jr.
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Houston Alfred Baker Jr. (born March 22, 1943) is an American scholar specializing in
African-American literature African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. Phillis Wheatley was an enslaved African woman who became the first African American to publish a book of poetry, which was publis ...
and Distinguished University Professor of English at
Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private university, private research university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provide ...
. Baker served as president of the
Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "str ...
, editor of the journal ''
American Literature American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the British colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also ...
'', and has authored several books, including ''The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism'', ''Modernism and the
Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African-American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics, and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the ti ...
'' (1987), ''Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature'' (1984), and ''Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing'' (1993), as well as editing literary collections.Eakin, Emily (May 5, 2001)
"Black Captive in a White Culture?"
, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''.
Lane, Richard J. (2006), ''Fifty Key Literary Theorists''. Routledge Key Guides series, pp. 3–9.Houston A. Baker, Jr. CV
Vanderbilt University.
Baker was included in the 2006 textbook ''Fifty Key Literary Theorists'', by Richard J. Lane.


Early life

Baker was born and raised in
Louisville, Kentucky Louisville is the List of cities in Kentucky, most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeastern United States, Southeast, and the list of United States cities by population, 27th-most-populous city ...
, a city he later described as "racist" and "stultifying"."Houston A. Baker Jr." in ''Contemporary Black Biography'', Volume 6. Gale Research, 1994. The racism and violence he claims to have experienced as a youth would later prompt him to conclude: "I had been discriminated against and called '
Nigger In the English language, ''nigger'' is a racial slur directed at black people. Starting in the 1990s, references to ''nigger'' have been increasingly replaced by the euphemistic contraction , notably in cases where ''nigger'' is Use–menti ...
' enough to think that what America needed was a good Black Revolution." He more recently revised that judgment in his 2007 book combining memoir and critique titled ''I Don't Hate the South'' (Oxford University Press).


Academic career

Baker's academic career initially progressed along traditional lines. He earned a B.A. in English literature from
Howard University Howard University is a private, historically black, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and accredited by the Mid ...
and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Victorian literature from the
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
. He began teaching at
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
and intended to write a biography of
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
. In 1970, Baker joined the
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...
's Center for Advanced Studies, and from 1974 to 1977 he directed the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
's Afro-American Studies Program. From 1977 to 1999, Baker was a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Starting in 1982, he was the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations, and in 1987 he founded the university's Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture, serving as the center's director until 1999. From 1999 to 2006, Baker was the Susan Fox and George D. Beischer Professor of English and editor of ''American Literature'' at
Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
. In 2006, after controversy surrounding his comments on the
Duke lacrosse case The Duke lacrosse rape hoax was a widely reported 2006 criminal case hoax in Durham, North Carolina, United States, in which three members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team were falsely accused of rape. The three students were David Ev ...
, he became a Distinguished University Professor at
Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private university, private research university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provide ...
.


Literary scholarship

Baker's work in African-American literary studies has been called "groundbreaking" for his ability to connect theory about the texts with the historical conditions of the beginning of the African-American community, namely, both their uprooting from Africa and their ability to maintain their African heritage through an emphasis on spirituality and on autobiography, which allowed them to "reinforce and reinvent self-worth in the midst of their debasement". His work in the 1970s focused on locating and mapping the origins of the "black aesthetic", such as found in the
Black Arts Movement The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African Americans, African-American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The mov ...
and the attendant development of anthologies, journals and monographs about African-American literature. Baker's breakthrough work was 1980's ''The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism'', in which he critiques earlier discussions of the black aesthetic and calls for an interdisciplinary approach that would focus on the context of the literary works, which he claims are always "in motion". Baker argues that the attempts to forge a black aesthetic in the 1960s were not simply descriptive, but actively creative and thus based on—and distorted by—the writers' idealism. Baker offers history as a corrective, arguing that the black community has always created art forms in the face of oppression and that black artists need to "journey back" in order to "re-affirm the richness and complexity" of black aesthetic history and to recuperate lost aesthetic forms. Baker used this approach in his 1987 study, ''Modernism and the
Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African-American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics, and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the ti ...
'', in which he takes black critics to task for accepting the common notion that the Harlem Renaissance was a failure and then shows how notions of modernism based on European and Angloamerican texts are "inappropriate for understanding Afro-American modernism". He argues that by examining the literature of the Harlem Renaissance in conversation with contemporaneous developments in African-American music, art and philosophy, we can identify the development of "new modes of production" that lead to a rebirth; Baker calls these modes "blues geographies". Baker points to
Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite#United S ...
's 1895 Exposition address as the beginning of African-American modernist concerns, in that Washington both adopted and subverted a
minstrel A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. The term originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist enter ...
mask, thus creating a post-slavery African-American
trope Trope or tropes may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Trope (cinema), a cinematic convention for conveying a concept * Trope (literature), a figure of speech or common literary device * Trope (music), any of a variety of different things in medi ...
that is both useful and restrictive. In ''Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance'', Baker argued for the importance of oral culture in the black aesthetic tradition, an idea he develops in his work on African-American feminists in the essay "There Is No More Beautiful Way: Theory and the Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing", which stresses the connection between oral culture and autobiography. Baker's 1984 book, ''Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory'', had also developed his ideas about blues geographies and about
orality Orality is thought and verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (especially writing and print) are unfamiliar to most of the population. The study of orality is closely allied to the study of oral tradition. The term "ora ...
, but had joined these ideas with developments in
post-structuralism Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...
, borrowing from the work of
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...
and
Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...
to argue that
blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...
music is a "matrix", a code that acts as the foundation for African-American artistic production insofar as blues music synthesizes numerous types of early African-American oral genres; he develops this notion of "blues geography" through his reading of key works by
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...
,
Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo ...
, Richard Wright,
Ralph Ellison Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel '' Invisible Man'', which won the National Book Award in 1953. Ellison wrote '' Shadow and Act'' (1964), a co ...
,
Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism. He was the author of numerous b ...
, and
Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically accl ...
. Richard J. Lane claims, in his analysis of Baker's contributions, that Baker's ability to connect literary theory with vernacular literature and to keep that combination connected to the material conditions of black life in the USA "provides a pedagogical model for ..new ways of reading literature in general".


Views on race

Holding "an exceedingly pessimistic view of American social progress where race is concerned," Baker has written many books on African Americans in modern American society. In ''Turning South Again: Rethinking Modernism/Rereading
Booker T Booker T or Booker T. may refer to * Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), African American political leader at the turn of the 20th century ** List of things named after Booker T. Washington, some nicknamed "Booker T." * Booker T. Jones (born 194 ...
'' (2001), Baker suggests that being a black American, even a successful one, amounts to a kind of prison sentence. Baker also harshly criticized then-Senator
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
's widely praised race-centered speech ( "A More Perfect Union") stemming from controversial remarks given by his pastor: "Sen. Obama's 'race speech' at the National Constitution Center, draped in American flags, was reminiscent of the Parthenon concluding scene of
Robert Altman Robert Bernard Altman ( ; February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer, producer. He is considered an enduring figure from the New Hollywood era, known for directing subversive and sat ...
's ''
Nashville Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...
'': a bizarre moment of mimicry, aping
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, civil and political rights, civil rights activist and political philosopher who was a leader of the civil rights move ...
, while even further distancing himself from the real, economic, religious and political issues so courageously articulated by King from a Birmingham jail. In brief, Obama's speech was a pandering disaster that threw, once again, his pastor under the bus."


2006 Duke University lacrosse case

During the
2006 Duke University lacrosse case The Duke lacrosse rape hoax was a widely reported 2006 criminal case hoax in Durham, North Carolina, United States, in which three members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team were falsely accused of rape. The three students were David Ev ...
, Baker published an open letter calling for Duke to dismiss the team and its players. Baker claimed that "white, male, athletic privilege" was responsible for the alleged rape. Baker suggested that the Duke administration was "sweeping things under the rug". More generally, Baker's letter criticized colleges and universities for the "blind-eyeing of male athletes, veritably given license to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech, and feel proud of themselves in the bargain." Duke Provost Peter Lange responded to Baker's letter a few days later, criticizing Baker for prejudging the team based on their race and gender, citing this as a classic tactic of racism. In 2007, charges against the players were dropped and the state's Attorney General took the extraordinary step of declaring the students innocent. Following the exoneration of the players, one of the parents of a Duke lacrosse player emailed Baker and reported that he responded by writing that she was "quite sadly, mother of a 'farm animal.
Peter Applebome Peter Applebome (born July 3, 1949) is an American editor and writer whose positions at ''The New York Times'' have included Deputy National Editor, Metropolitan Page Columnist and Houston and Atlanta Bureau Chief. Applebome was born in New Yor ...
(April 15, 2007)
"After Duke Prosecution Began to Collapse, Demonizing Continued"
''The New York Times''.


Works

*''Long Black Song: Essays in Black American Literature and Culture'', Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1972. * ''Singers of Daybreak: Studies in Black American Literature'', Washington: Howard University Press, 1974. * ''A Many-Colored Coat of Dreams: The Poetry of Countee Cullen'', Detroit: Broadside Press, 1974. * (With Charlotte Pierce-Baker), ''Renewal: A Volume of Black Poems'', Philadelphia: Afro-American Studies Program, University of Pennsylvania, 1977. * ''No Matter Where You Travel, You Still Be Black'' (Poems), Detroit: Lotus Press, 1979. *''The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism''. University of Chicago Press, 1980. * ''Spirit Run'' (poems), Detroit: Lotus Press, 1982. *''Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory''. University of Chicago Press, 1984. *''Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance''. University of Chicago Press, 1987. *''Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing''. University of Chicago Press, 1993. *''Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy''. University of Chicago Press, 1993. *''Turning South Again: Re-Thinking Modernism/Re-Reading Booker T''. Duke University Press, 2001. *''Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Right Era'' (
American Book Award The American Book Awards are an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "t ...
), 2009. *''The Trouble with Post-Blackness'' Columbia University Press, 2015.


As editor

* ''Black Literature in America'', New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971. * ''Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Native Son'', Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972. * ''Reading Black: Essays in the Criticism of African, Caribbean, and Black American Literature'', Ithaca, NY: Cornell University (Africana Studies and Research Center Monograph Series, no. 4), 1976. * ''A Dark and Sudden Beauty: Two Essays in Black American Poetry by George Kent and Stephen Henderson'', Philadelphia: Afro-American Studies Program, University of Pennsylvania, 1977. * (With
Leslie Fiedler Leslie Aaron Fiedler (March 8, 1917 – January 29, 2003) was an American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work incorporates the application of psychological theories to American ...
) ''English Literature: Opening Up the Canon'', Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. * ''Three American Literatures: Essays in Chicano, Native American, and Asian American Literature for Teachers of American Literature'', New York: Modern Language Association of American, 1982; paper edition from MLA, 1983. * ''Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An Americana Slave'', New York: Penguin, 1982; Ebook 2013. * (With Patricia Redmond) ''Afro-American Literary Study in the 1990s'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. * '' Unsettling Blackness'', Special Issue of ''American Literature'' devoted to Afro-American Literary Studies, 2000. * (With Dana Nelson) ''Violence, the Body, and the South'', Special Issue of ''American Literature'', 2001. * ''Erasing the Commas: RaceGenderClassSexualityRegion'', Special Issue of ''American Literature'' (March, 2005). * ''The Trouble with Post-Blackness'', Columbia University Press, 2015.


Notes


References

*Awkward, Michael. "Houston A. Baker Jr." ''The Oxford Companion to African American Literature''. William L. Andres, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, ed.
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 1997. *Hatch, Shari Dorantes and Michael R. Strickland. ''African-American Writers: A Dictionary''. ABC-CLIO, 2000. *"Houston A. Baker Jr." ''Contemporary Authors Online'', Gale, 2007. *"Houston A. Baker Jr." ''Contemporary Black Biography'', Volume 6. Gale Research, 1994. *"Houston A. Baker Jr." ''The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature''. Emmanuel S. Nelson (ed.), 5 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. 228–29. *"Houston A. Baker Jr." ''Notable Black American Men Book II'', Thomson Gale, 2006.


External links


Vanderbilt Faculty profile
*
Terry Teachout Terrance Alan Teachout (February 6, 1956 – January 13, 2022) was an American author, critic, biographer, playwright, stage director, and librettist. He was the drama critic of ''The Wall Street Journal'', the critic-at-large of '' Commentary' ...
'
1993 ''New Criterion'' article on Houston Baker
(it appears one needs a subscription to access this article) *Winston Napier
"From the Shadows: Houston Baker's Move toward a Postnationalist Appraisal of the Black Aesthetic"
''Literary History and Other Histories'', Vol. 25, No. 1 (Winter 1994; The Johns Hopkins University Press), pp. 159–174. *
Inside Higher Ed ''Inside Higher Ed'' is an American online publication of news, opinion, resources, events and jobs in the higher education sphere. In 2022, Quad Partners, a private equity firm, sold it to Times Higher Education, itself owned by Inflexion Priv ...
br>article on Houston BakerInterview
with Baker on "New Books in African American Studies" *King, Richard H. Baker, Houston A. Perot, Ruth Turner. Panel presentation and audience discussion of "
Who Speaks for the Negro The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has 6 regional offices and 150 ...
?" 2008, Vanderbilt University Institutional Repository, accessed January 18, 2021. {{DEFAULTSORT:Baker, Houston A. Jr. 1943 births Living people 20th-century African-American academics 20th-century American academics 21st-century African-American academics 21st-century American academics African-American non-fiction writers Alumni of the University of Edinburgh American Book Award winners American literary critics American literary theorists American male non-fiction writers Black studies scholars Duke University faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Howard University alumni Presidents of the Modern Language Association University of California, Los Angeles alumni Vanderbilt University faculty Writers from Louisville, Kentucky