Bearing Witness to African American Literature: Validating and Valorizing Its Authority, Authenticity, and Agency: African American Life (Paperback)

Bernard W. Bell is the author, editor, and co-editor of eight monographs and books, including The Contemporary African American Novel: Its Folk Roots and Literary Branches, which has received four national awards, including an American Book Award. He is an award-winning Liberal Arts Research Professor of American and African American Literature, Language and Culture at Pennsylvania State University. Bell was a co-founder in 1969 of the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Sudies, University of Massachusetts, and chairman in 1970 of the interim Five College Afro-American Studies Executive Committee (a consortium of departments at Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, and Hampshire Solleges with the University of Massachusetts). He has received five Fulbright awards, as well as an exchange professorship at the University of Freiburg in Germany.