Aspects of writing: Guest Dr. Thabiti Lewis, Ph.D. July 3rd

                     

*Aspects of writing: Guest Dr. Thabiti Lewis, Ph.D. July 3rd*

About Dr. Thabiti Lewis

Thabiti Lewis is from St. Louis Missouri, where he grew up in West and North St. Louis and is the middle child of five. After he graduated from Sumner High School where he was a member of the Drama Club and captain of the baseball team, he attended the University of Rochester where he cultivated his interests in literature and history, graduating with degrees in both, but honors in history. The following year he obtain an M.A.T. from the University of Rochester's School of Education.

After spending a few years living between Chicago and St. Louis working as a high school teacher and university lecturer, freelance writer, newspaper columnist and radio host, he enrolled Saint Louis University where he obtained a doctorate in English in 2001, with a special focus on the Black Arts Movement literature and Black Feminist writer Toni Cade Bambara.

In 2000, he received a summer fellowship at Indiana University in Bloomington,Indiana and in 2008 a Lilly Library Grant. While he was a member of the English department at Willamette University he chaired and was instrumental in the development of the American Ethnic Studies Program there.

He is currently an Associate Professor of English at Washington State University Vancouver. He has published widely in the areas of African American literature, African American Studies, and sport and race. His areas of teaching are 20th century American literature, African American literature, Race and Cultural Studies. Dr. Lewis has worked as a journalist, talk radio host, and as an editor.

Thabiti Lewis has written for several newspapers, magazines, journals and magazines such as The Source Magazine, Crisis Magazine, NewsOne, The St. Louis American, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oregon Humanities Magazine, and The Oregonian. He has also contributed several political and cultural commentaries to radio programs.

In November of 2010 he published a ground-breaking book on race and American culture, Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America (Third World Press). Prior to this he edited and co-edited special issues of journals (The Willamette Journal and AmeriQuests Journal). He is the editor of the forthcoming book Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara (University Press of Mississippi, Fall 2012), and is completing a book-length study of the fiction of the writer Toni Cade Bambara. He is also at work on a study of the performance of heroism, race, and masculinity in American sports museums.

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