James E. Smethurst, Associate Professor

Office Information

Office:	Room 310	New Africa House
Phone:	413-545-0185	(413) 545-2751
Hours:	Thursdays 11 - 1:00 p.m.	And by appointment

 

Current Course Information

Fall 2009:	AfroAm 390C	Afro-American Literature of the 30's
	AfroAm 692F	From Reconstruction to Renaissance
	AfroAm 691D	Major Works in Afro-American Studies III
	AfroAm 701	Major Works in Afro-American Studies I

 

 

 

Course Syllabi (pdf)

AfroAm 390C "Afro-American Literature of the 1930's"
AfroAm 692F "From Reconstruction to Renaissance"

 

Brief Bio
James Smethurst received his Ph.D. in English from Harvard University in 1996. He is Associate Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst . Professor Smethurst is the author of The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946 (Oxford University Press, 1999) and The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (University of North Carolina Press , 2005). He is also the co-editor of Left of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism and Twentieth-Century Literature of the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2003) and Radicalism in the South since Reconstruction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). His scholarly interests include African American literature and culture; 20th-century poetry in English; 19th- and 20th-century American literature; Chicana/o literature; ethnic studies; literary modernism; film, music and popular culture; literature of industrialization and urbanization; cultural history; intellectual history; and gender studies. He is currently working on a study of African American literature culture from 1880 to 1918 and ideas of artistic modernity and modernism in the United States.

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

	with Chris Green, and Rachel Rubin, eds., Radicalism in the South since Reconstruction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 )
	The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005)
	with Bill Mullen, eds., Left of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism and Twentieth-Century Literature of the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)
	The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)