National Book Award for Alain Locke Biography
The 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction has been awarded to Jeffrey C. Stewart of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), for his book, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford University Press).
Alain Locke was born in 1885. After college at Harvard University, he became the first African-American Rhodes Scholar and studied philosophy at Oxford. He then returned to Harvard for his PhD. He spent most of his teaching career at Howard University. He was known as the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance,” a theorist and critic of art and literature, and a philosopher specializing in ethics, race, culture, and aesthetics.
Professor Stewart holds an appointment in UCSB’s Department of Black Studies, specializes in intellectual history, and has written on other figures in black intellectual history, such as Paul Robeson, Rayford Logan, Sojourner Truth, and Jacob Lawrence.
More information here and here.
You can purchase the book here.
(via Michael Glawson)
A Select Bibliography for Locke (no, not that one!):
• Cain, Rudolph Alexander Kofi. Alain Leroy Locke: Race, Culture, and the Education of African American Adults. Amsterdam, NY: Rodopi, 2003.
• Carter, Jacoby Adeshei, “Alain LeRoy Locke,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/alain-locke/
• Carter, Jacoby Adeshei and Leonard Harris, eds. Philosophic Values and World Citizenship: Locke to Obama and Beyond. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010.
• Harris, Leonard, ed. The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1989.
• Harris, Leonard, ed. The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.
• Harris, Leonard and Charles Molesworth. Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
• Locke, Alain. Race Contacts and Interracial Relations: Lectures of the Theory and Practice of Race. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1916
• Locke, Alain (Charles Molesworth, ed.) The Works of Alain Locke. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Locke, Alain, ed. The New Negro. New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925.
• Stewart, Jeffrey, ed. The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Collection of His Essays on Art and Culture. New York: Garland Publishing, 1983.
• Stewart, Jeffrey C. The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Washington, Johnny. Alain Locke and Philosophy: A Quest for Cultural Pluralism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986.
• Washington, Johnny. A Journey into the Philosophy of Alain Locke. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.