Henry Louis Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an educator, scholar, literary critic, writer, and the chair of Harvard's Afro-American Studies program. Gates earned a BA summa cum laude from Yale and a Ph.D. in English from Clare College, Cambridge University. After teaching at Yale, he was denied tenure, passed over in favor of the distinguished literary critic Robert Stepto. Gates and his frequent collaborator, Anglo-Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, decamped to Cornell University, then to Duke University before settling at Harvard. September 16 is the 259th day of the year (260th in leap years). ... 1950 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... This article is about the institution of higher learning in the United States. ... Full name Clare College Motto _ Named after Elizabeth de Clare Previous names University Hall (1326), Clare Hall (1338), Clare College (1856) Established 1326 Sister College Oriel College St Hughs College Master Prof. ... The University of Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world (after Oxford). ... Tenure commonly refers to academic tenure systems, in which professors (at the university level)—and in some jurisdictions schoolteachers (at primary or secondary school levels)—are granted the right not to be fired without cause after an initial probationary period. ... Kwame Anthony Appiah is a philosopher and novelist. ... Cornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... Duke University is a private university located in Durham, North Carolina in the United States. ...

Gates has applied structuralism, post-structuralism and semiotics to textual analysis and matters of identity politics. He hosted America Beyond the Color Line for PBS. Structuralism is an approach that grew to become one of the most widely used methods of analyzing language, culture, philosophy of mathematics, and society in the second half of the 20th century. ... Post-structuralism is a body of work that followed in the wake of structuralism, and sought to understand the Western world as a network of structures, as in structuralism, but in which such structures are ordered primarily by local, shifting differences (as in deconstruction) rather than grand binary oppositions and... Semiotics (also spelled Semeiotics) is the study of signs and sign systems. ... PBS re-directs here; for alternate uses see PBS (disambiguation) PBS logo The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a non-profit public broadcasting television service with 349 member TV stations in the United States. ...

He originated the application of the concept of "signifyin(g)" to African-American literary criticism and history.

Books

• The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, winner of the American Book Award
• Black Literature and Literary Theory editor
• Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self
• Norton Anthology of African American Literature co-edited with Nellie Y. McKay.
• Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man Vintage; Reprint edition (1998) ISBN 0679776664

He has also edited Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave. The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. ... Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. ...

See also

• African American National Biography Project

The African American National Biography Project is a joint project of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research and Oxford University Press. ...

External link

• Gale - Free Resources - Black History Month - Biographies - Henry Louis Gates Jr. (http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/gates_h.htm)