Thabiti Lewis came to IU to teach L354, American Literature since 1914, for IU’s Department of English. He said he taught his canon, highlighting the distinction between it and that regarded, historically, as universal: “I say ‘my canon’ because I try not to think of a subjective reading list as some sort of violent act.  We are, however, reading a diverse range of works from Whitman, Eliot, and Anderson to Toomer, Kingston, and Faulkner.” The course drew a majority of English majors, and some from Education, so students were prepared to engage with the material.  “After the first three weeks of lecturing, students begin to give presentations in class on the assigned readings,” Lewis said.  “They control the discussion and help move us towards our goal of critical thinking and collaborative learning.”

 He has previously instructed in small colleges, junior colleges, and secondary schools, although his professional experience thus far is by no means limited to teaching.  His double undergraduate degree in history and English, granted from the University of Rochester–the institution where he also received an M.A.T. in English Education–marks his interest in how knowledge intersects with, and can impact, the inhabited world.  He said, “I see myself, in a sense, as a public intellectual–though I don’t necessarily want to use that term; but what’s the point of gathering ideas that are isolated in the academic community?”

 And so Lewis has expressed his interest in literary and cultural affairs via journalism.  He has been an editor for the Third World Press, based in Chicago, the oldest continually operating African-American Press, and has also edited for the Black Books Bulletin, a literary magazine.  He has additionally written for the latter publication, and produced many articles, columns, and essays for The St. Louis American and The Source, a magazine of  hip hop and politics. Most recently, he published an interview with poet Quincy Troupe and a review of Toni Cade Bambara’s novel, Those Bones are not my Child, in The Gaither Reporter.

 During the summer, Lewis directed his writing energy exclusively towards his dissertation.

He plans to submit it for defense to his committee in St. Louis University’s Department of English by May of 2001.  His subject is spiritual wholeness in Toni Cade Bambara’s fiction.  “She was really ahead of her time,” he said, pointing not only to her 1970 publication of The Black Woman: An Anthology and her political role, but also to the ways her creative work negotiates black feminist and black nationalist tensions.  “I’m interested in how she remains committed to each project, that she comes up with ideas about ways to keep people whole, this notion of female/male unity to create a kind of cultural unity.”  He thinks that the Black Arts Movement, often charged with subordinating gender issues to those dealing with racial inequalities and monolithism, acted as a catapult for many black feminist writers, particularly for Bambara, as well as for African American literature more generally.

 Lewis hopes that work like his dissertation will help ensure Bambara’s place in the academy, both in terms of her artistic contribution and her political vision.  Upon completing this project, he plans to start a biography on the author.  “My idea for the title is Toni Cade: Activist–you see Activist has to come first–: Activist, Artist, Feminist.”