Book on Alain Locke Wins Pulitzer Prize
A book on philosopher Alain Locke has won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart (University of California, Santa Barbara) presents “a panoramic view of the personal trials and artistic triumphs of the father of the Harlem Renaissance and the movement he inspired.”
Alain Locke, born in 1885, went to college at Harvard and then became the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, studying philosophy at Oxford. He then returned to Harvard for his PhD, and taught for much of his career at Howard University. He was a theorist and critic of art and literature, and a philosopher specializing in ethics, race, culture, and aesthetics.
Professor Stewart’s book won the National Book Award for Nonfiction last year.
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.