Brent Hayes Edwards facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Brent Hayes Edwards
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Edwards in 2009
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| Alma mater | Yale University (BA) Columbia University (MA, PhD) |
| Occupation | Academic |
| Employer | Columbia University |
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Notable work
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The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship |
Brent Hayes Edwards is a well-known professor. He teaches English and comparative literature at Columbia University. This means he studies and compares different types of writing and stories.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Brent Hayes Edwards went to Yale University for his first degree. After that, he continued his studies at Columbia University. There, he earned both his master's degree (MA) and his PhD.
Professor and Scholar
Teaching Career
Professor Edwards has taught at several universities. He taught at Rutgers University before coming to Columbia. He also taught at summer programs. These included Cornell University's graduate program and Dartmouth College's program.
Important Books and Studies
Edwards is known for his first book, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. This book was published in 2003. It looks at black writers from the time between the two World Wars. He studied how black writers from English-speaking and French-speaking countries connected. He showed how translation helped new ideas grow in the black diaspora. The "diaspora" refers to people who have spread out from their original homeland.
Edwards also helped put together a collection of writings. It was called Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies. He worked on this book with Farah Griffin and Robert G. O'Meally in 2004.
In 2009, Edwards edited a new version of a famous book. It was W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk. He also helps guide two literary magazines. These are Callaloo and Transition.
In 2023, Edwards co-wrote a book with jazz musician Henry Threadgill. The book is called Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music. It tells the story of Threadgill's life in music.
Finding a Lost Manuscript
In 2009, something exciting happened. One of Edwards's students, Jean-Christophe Cloutier, found an old manuscript. It was in Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The manuscript was among the papers of writer Samuel Roth.
In 2012, Professor Edwards and Cloutier worked together. They checked old papers and letters. They also talked to other experts. They confirmed that the manuscript was a lost work by Claude McKay. Claude McKay was a famous writer from the Harlem Renaissance. The book was written in 1941 and called Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem.
Henry Louis Gates, a well-known expert, called it a "major discovery." He said it greatly added to the number of novels written by Harlem Renaissance authors.
Awards and Honors
Professor Edwards has received many awards for his work.
- In 2004, his book The Practice of Diaspora won two awards. It received the John Hope Franklin Prize and the Gilbert Chinard Prize. It also got an honorable mention for the James Russell Lowell Prize.
- In 2005, he won the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship. This allowed him to spend a year researching jazz music in New York in the 1970s.
- In 2015, Edwards received a Guggenheim Fellowship. This award helped him work on a book project. The project was about "The Art of the Lecture."
- In 2024, he won a PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Award. This was for his book Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music. He shared this award with Henry Threadgill.
