Steven C. Tracey Named Distinguished Professor
Steven C. Tracy is considered the leading authority on the intersection of African-American literature and blues music. He is the author of Langston Hughes and the Blues (plus subsequent editions, including a Chinese translation); Going to Cincinnati: A History of the Blues in the Queen City; A Brush with the Blues; and Hot Music, Ragmentation, and the Bluing of American Literature. He has edited or co-edited seven additional books for top academic publishers and has published some 75 book chapters and articles. In recent years, he has responded to growing international interest in African-American literature with global outreach, especially to a burgeoning Chinese audience.
A performer as well as a scholar of the blues, Tracy has played with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, opened for B.B. King, T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters, and has appeared on national radio and television. “It is very rare to find this combination of scholarly excellence and performance history, but this unique combination has ensured that Tracy is known and admired across many cultural boundaries,” said Subbaswamy and Newman.
Tracy joined the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies in 1995. He as promoted to associate professor in 1998 and to professor in 2002. In 2012, he was named a Fulbright senior specialist at the University of Konstanz in Germany. In 2011, Central China Normal University named him Hubei Province Chu Tian Scholar, beginning an affiliation with CCNU that has now been repeatedly renewed and extended through 2021, providing him opportunities and funding to lecture in Europe as well as in Asia. Tracy has twice been nominated for the Distinguished Teaching Award.
The appointment was recommended by Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy and provost Katherine Newman and approved Sept. 21 by the university’s board of trustees.
This article has been excerpted from the Office of News and Media Relations.