NEWS

R. Baxter Miller

Albert Christ-Janer Award 2013

R. Baxter Miller, professor of English and African American Studies, is recognized as one of the nation’s most prominent experts on African American literature. Much of his scholarship has focused on the great Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. Of the 10 books Miller has written, compiled or edited, four are on Hughes. With his 1989 book, The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes, which won the American Book Award in 1991, Miller produced what is widely regarded as the first scholarly work to address fully the literary complexity and significance of Hughes’s writing. Miller is credited with remapping the historical renaissances in American literature by demonstrating that the Harlem or New Negro Renaissance of the 1920s and the New Chicago Renaissance of the 1930s to 1970s were part of three complementary historical streams within a broader movement. In the last four years, Miller has produced three well-respected books, and he continues to present his research to audiences throughout the world.

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