Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is a professor at Harvard University, the author of many books of literary criticism and African American history, and the director of Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research. Gates has been a prominent scholar in African-American studies for decades. He graduated from Yale with a history degree in 1973, then went on to get MA and PhD degrees from Clare College at Cambridge University in England. Gates taught at Yale (1976-85), Cornell (1985-89) and Duke (1989-91) before landing at Harvard in 1991. By that time Gates had become a well-known author and a strong proponent of black literature and culture. Among his many books are The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988), Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992), The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin (2006), and Colored People, his 1994 memoir about his childhood in West Virginia. Gates has written often for The New Yorker, Time and other magazines and been the editor of The Root, an online magazine. He was given a "genius" grant by the MacArthur Foundation in 1991. Gates also hosted the 2006 PBS TV series African American Lives and the 1998 PBS series Wonders of the African World.