NYU INSTITUTE OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN AFFAIRS AND AFRICANA STUDIES PROGRAM WELCOME DAVID LEVERING LEWIS AS DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR IN RESIDENCE

David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Biographer and Historian, To Participate in 7 Days of Academic and Public Events at New York University

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian David Levering Lewis is the 2000 Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at NYU's Institute of African-American Affairs and Africana Studies Program. In keeping with the program's mission to facilitate the investigation of the role of Africans and African-Americans in the construction of the modern world, Lewis will participate in academic seminars, make public presentations, and meet with students, offering a unique opportunity for students and the public alike.

Racism in the Service of Civil Rights: Du Bois in Germany, China, and Japan, 1936-37 A public presentation by David Levering Lewis on Du Bois's "forgotten" trips to Nazi Germany, Japanese-occupied Manchuria, war-torn China, and Imperial Japan.
Monday, December 4th, 7:00 p.m. John Ben Snow Room Bobst Library, 12th Floor 70 Washington Square South

Two Responses to American Exceptionalism: W.E.B. Du Bois & Martin Luther King, Jr. A public presentation by David Levering Lewis on the evolving radicalism of Du Bois and King as both came to test the economic limits to civil rights redress in America.
Wednesday, December 6th, 6:30 p.m. Greenberg Lounge Vanderbilt Hall, Ground Floor 40 Washington Square South

A two-time finalist for the National Book Award, Lewis is the Martin Luther King, Jr. University Professor of History at Rutgers University. Renowned for his exhaustive research and vivid, yet sensitive, renderings of dynamic figures and events in world history, Lewis has contributed to a fuller appreciation of African resistance to European colonialism and to a more comprehensive understanding of African-American artistic and political movements. The author of King, A Biography and When Harlem Was in Vogue, he has received international acclaim for his definitive two-part biography of W.E.B. Du Bois, the extraordinary intellectual and premier architect of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1994, the first installment, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, received 9 major awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction and the Bancroft Prize in American History. Published this year, the second volume, W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963, is a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award for Non-fiction and fittingly completes a work heralded as "the finest biography of Du Bois ever written."

Recognized for his candor as much as for his attention to detail, Lewis repeatedly achieves where others fall short. In The Washington Post, fellow historian Nell Irvin Painter applauded W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 for its "refreshing recovery" of the legacies left by Du Bois's wife Nina and their daughter Yolande. Critics have praised the "keen insight" Lewis brought to The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, and most recently, novelist and cultural critic Ishmael Reed offered his compliments to W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight For Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963. After congratulating Lewis for his treatment of the turbulent later years of his subject's life, including Du Bois's ambivalence toward Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, Reed wrote, "Lewis's book succeeds, not only because of its meticulous scholarship, but because [it is] unlike the average American history book."

David Levering Lewis is the second Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at NYU's Africana Studies Department and Institute for African-American Affairs, following Nigerian-born Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. In announcing his appointment, Manthia Diawara, director of the Institute and the Africana Studies Program, said, "Lewis is a celebrated historian whose work reflects the mutual dependence of African and African-American history. He is a valuable role model for students and his participation complements our own efforts to develop what is already a major intellectual forum."

Since its inception in 1969, the Institute of African-American Affairs at NYU has been a vibrant cultural community center dedicated to the research, documentation and celebration of black culture and creative expression. In conjunction with NYU's Africana Studies Program, the Institute examines Blacks in modernity through the dual perspectives of Pan-Africanism and Black Urban Studies. The Institute for African-American Affairs and the Africana Studies Program are distinct organizations that share a common leadership, staff and facilities.

11/22/00