Brent Hayes Edwards
Edwards in 2009
Alma materYale University (BA)
Columbia University (MA, PhD)
OccupationAcademic
EmployerColumbia University
Notable workThe Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship

Brent Hayes Edwards is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University.

Early life

Edwards attended Yale as an undergraduate, then completed an MA and PhD at Columbia.

Career

Teaching

Edwards has taught at Rutgers University[1] and now at Columbia, as well as Cornell's summer graduate program, the School of Criticism and Theory,[2] and the Dartmouth summer graduate program The Futures of American Studies.[3]

Scholarship

Edwards's first book is The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Harvard University Press, 2003). It examines black writers in the interwar period, focusing on sites of interaction between Anglophone and Francophone black writers to develop an argument about the generative potential of translation, specifically in the black diaspora.[4] Among other influences, Edwards draws on Stuart Hall's use of the concept of articulation to develop a theoretical use of the French term décalage, "referring to a shift in space or time or the gap that results from it...[Edwards argues] that these disparate locations are, like joints, sites of potential forward motion."[5]

Edwards also edited the collection Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press, 2004) with Farah Jasmine Griffin and Robert G. O'Meally.

In 2009, Edwards edited a new printing of W.E.B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk from Oxford University Press.

Edwards serves on the editorial boards of Callaloo and Transition.

In 2023, Edwards co-wrote and edited the autobiography of jazz musician Henry Threadgill, Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music.[6]

Claude McKay manuscript discovery

In 2009, Edwards's graduate student Jean-Christophe Cloutier discovered a manuscript in Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library in the papers of writer Samuel Roth.[7] In 2012, Edwards and Cloutier, in consultation with other experts and after examining archival materials and personal correspondence, authenticated the manuscript as a previously unknown 1941 work by Claude McKay, called Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem.[8] Henry Louis Gates, who served as one of the experts evaluating the manuscript's authenticity, called it a "major discovery...It dramatically expands the canon of novels written by Harlem Renaissance writers."[8]

Awards

In 2004, Edwards's book The Practice of Diaspora won the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association[9] and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Society for French Historical Studies, and an honorable mention for the James Russell Lowell Prize of the Modern Language Association.[10]

In 2005, Edwards won the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship,[11] to spend one year researching a project on jazz in New York in the 1970s.[12]

In 2015, Edwards was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship[13] to pursue a book project entitled "The Art of the Lecture."[14]

References

  1. "Newsletter of the Friends of Rutgers English: Online - Excellence Recognized". english.rutgers.edu. No. Fall/winter. 2003. Archived from the original on 24 August 2016. Retrieved 10 August 2016.
  2. "Past Faculty | The School of Criticism and Theory". sct.cornell.edu. Cornell University. Archived from the original on 12 August 2016. Retrieved 10 August 2016.
  3. "Futures Faculty: 2006". www.dartmouth.edu. Dartmouth college. Archived from the original on 20 August 2016. Retrieved 10 August 2016.
  4. Stephens, Michelle (Fall 2004). "The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (review)". MFS Modern Fiction Studies. 50 (3): 792–794. doi:10.1353/mfs.2004.0090. ISSN 1080-658X. S2CID 162346267. Archived from the original on 28 August 2016. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
  5. Robinson, Kristina Kay (July 15, 2016). "My Journey From Louisiana to Havana, and Back Again". The Nation. Archived from the original on 19 August 2016. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
  6. Williams, Richard (August 4, 2023). "Summer books 1: Henry Threadgill". the blue moment. Retrieved August 5, 2023.
  7. Driscoll, Molly (18 September 2012). "New manuscript by Harlem Renaissance writer Claude McKay is discovered". Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
  8. 1 2 Lee, Felicia R. (14 September 2012). "Harlem Renaissance Novel by Claude McKay Is Discovered". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 30 May 2015. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
  9. "ASA Awards and Prizes | American Studies Association". www.theasa.net. American Studies Association. Archived from the original on 16 July 2016. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
  10. "James Russell Lowell Prize Winners | Modern Language Association". www.mla.org. Modern Language Association. Archived from the original on 2015-11-23. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
  11. "The New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Announces 2016-2017 Fellows". The New York Public Library. Archived from the original on 11 August 2016. Retrieved 10 August 2016.
  12. MacMillan, Sarah (2005). "Friends of Rutgers - A Newsletter for Alumni and Friends of the Department of English". english.rutgers.edu. No. Spring/Summer. Archived from the original on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 10 August 2016.
  13. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Brent Hayes Edwards". www.gf.org. Guggenheim Foundation. Archived from the original on 10 August 2016. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
  14. "Guggenheim Fellowships awarded to three faculty, 16 alumni". Yale News. April 14, 2015. Archived from the original on 13 September 2016. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
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