Selwyn R. Cudjoe is a Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College where he teaches courses on the African-American Literary Tradition, African Literature, Black Women Writers, and Caribbean literature. His most recent course is entitled "Caribbean Intellectual Thought." He is also a visiting scholar at the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard University.
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, 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. He received a third and fourth Endowment for the Humanities Award for the academic year 1996–97 and the summer of 1995. He is also the recipient of the Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas (1995–99).
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. He also conducted the Trinidad and Tobago Literature Project for high school teachers (summer 1996 and 1997) and for young adults (summer 1998).
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.
In 2002, Professor Cudjoe convened a conference, “Eric Williams and the Pan African Moment,” which scholars such as Homi Bhabha, Robert Young, Errol Hill, and Biodun Jeyifo attended.
Dr. Cudjoe is the author of Beyond Boundaries: The Intellectual Tradition of Trinidad and Tobago in the Nineteenth Century (Calaloux/University of Massachusetts, 2003); Afro-Trinbagonians: No Longer Blinded by Our Eyes (Calaloux, 2001); 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). He also edited a new edition of Maxwell Philip's Emmanuel Appadocca (University of Massachusetts Press, 1997). Cudjoe is also a member of the Editorial Board of Encarta Africana, an encyclopedia in CD-ROM form, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Anthony Appiah.
Dr. Cudjoe is a member of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago.
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.
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Profile last updated: 8/04