Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Ph.D
Selwyn R. Cudjoe is a Professor of Africana Studies and, from 1995 to 1999, the fourth Marion Butler McLean Chair in the History of Ideas at Wellesley College. He teaches courses on the African American Literary Tradition, African Literature, Black WomenWriters, and Caribbean literature. His most recent course is entitled "Blackness in the American Literary Imagination."
A graduate of Fordham University where he received both a B.A. in English (1969) and an M.A. in American Literature (1972), Professor Cudjoe earned a Ph.D. in American Literature from Cornell University (1976). Prior to joining the Wellesley faculty in 1986, he taught at Ithaca College and Cornell, Harvard, Brandeis, Fordham, and Ohio universities. He has been a lecturer at Auburn (N.Y.) State Prison and taught at Bedford-Stuyvesant (N.Y.) Youth-In-Action.
In October, 1993, Selwyn Cudjoe was asked to join a delegation of 30 educators and religious and community leaders from New England selected to accompany exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on his anticipated return to Haiti where, as observers, they were prepared to assist in monitoring restoration of democracy and human rights. An authority on Caribbean writers and a Visiting Scholar in Afro-American Studies at Harvard University from 1992-1994, Dr. Cudjoe received his second National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1994 to organize a Summer Seminar in Caribbean Literature for secondary school teachers. Held at Wellesley College, the six-week seminar attracted teachers from Africa, the Caribbean and across the U.S.
Previously, in 1991, he received an NEH Fellowship and an ACLS Fellowship (which he declined) for his sabbatical project, The Intellectual Legacy of C.L.R. James, and was named Visiting Scholar at Harvard's W.E.B. Dubois Institute. That year, in collaboration with William Cain, Professor of English at Wellesley College, Professor Cudjoe also organized a conference on the intellectual legacy of C.L.R. James, a West Indian scholar and activist. Participants included such scholars as Orlando Patterson, Derek Walcott, Robin Blackburn and Michael Foot.
In April, 1988, Professor Cudjoe coordinated the first major conference on women writers of the English-speaking Caribbean at which critics and social commentators including Jeremy Poynting and Daryl Dance met with authors Jamaica Kincaid, Paule Marshall and Rosa Guy, among others.
Dr. Cudjoe is the author of V. S. Naipaul: A Materialist Reading (University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), Movement of the People: Essays on Independence (Ithaca, Calaloux 1983), Resistance and Caribbean Literature (Ohio University Press 1980), and The Role of Resistance in the Caribbean Novel (Latin American Studies Program, Cornell University, 1976). He has edited Caribbean Women Writers (Calaloux, University of Massachusetts, 1990); Eric Williams Speaks (Calaloux, University of Massachusetts, 1993) and co-edited C.L.R. James: His Intellectual Legacy (University of Massachusetts Press, 1994).
A producer and host of television programs for Trinidad and Tobago Television, he wrote the documentary, Tacarigua: A Village in Trinidad, produced by Cornell University. He recently completed a second documentary that focused on women writers of the Caribbean. It premiered at Wellesley College in April 1994.
Previous Experiences in Teaching High School Teachers as explained by Professor Cudjoe
I am especially qualified to conduct this seminar. I have received grants from the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) to conduct similar programs. During the summer of 1994 I conducted a seminar, "Classic Texts in Caribbean Literature: Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, Walcott's Omeros, and Lamming's Castle of My Skin," at Wellesley College. Seventeen teachers from the United States, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, England, and Ethiopia attended. The teachers made favorable comments on the program and were excited by the learning experience that took place. I also received a grant from the NEH to conduct research on Trinidad and Tobago literature (1805-1939) during the summer of 1995. I expect this study to be completed in 1997. I also had the pleasure of working with three Trinidad students on this project.
Apart from having taught in Trinidad (at Tacarigua, Point Fortin, and Curepe E.C. schools) I have also had a long association with high school teachers and the teaching of Caribbean literature. I know that high school teachers long for opportunities to pursue their intellectual interests without the pressures of day-to-day grading and teaching preparation. They also long to explore new areas of literature for aesthetic reasons and to study unencumbered by the demands of their jobs.
I have also conducted a literature seminar for Boston teachers. Barbara Beatty, associate professor in Wellesley's Education Department, and I organized a conference, "Teaching Afro-American and Caribbean Literature in High Schools." It was sponsored in part by the Boston Public Schools and was attended by high school teachers, curriculum coordinators, and superintendents from the Boston metropolitan area and was concerned with the content and method of teaching Afro-American and Caribbean literature. It proved to be an important exercise in retraining teachers in literature and was approved as a part of the ongoing training of Boston school teachers.