Hutchinson, George 1953–

(George B. Hutchinson)

PERSONAL:

Born 1953. Education: Brown University, A.B., 1975; Indiana University, Bloomington, M.A., 1980, Ph.D., 1983.

ADDRESSES:

Home—IN. Office—Department of English, Indiana University, 442 Ballantine Hall, 1020 E. Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405-7103. E-mail—gbhutchi@indiana.edu.

CAREER:

U.S. Peace Corps, Burkina Faso, well digger, 1975-77; University of Tennessee, Knoxville, chair of American Studies Program for thirteen years, Kenneth Curry Chair of English, 1982-2000; Indiana University, Bloomington, Booth Tarkington Chair of Literary Studies, 2000—. Visiting professor at University of Bonn, Germany.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association (member of advisory council and nominating committee of the American Literature Section), Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation summer stipend, 1986; National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, 1988, 1989-90; Darwin Turner Prize, Modern Language Association, 1995, for work in African American literature; Chancellor's Citation, University of Tennessee, 1997, for outstanding research and creative achievement; Christian Gauss Award, Phi Beta Kappa, 2007, for In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line; named Phi Beta Kappa lecturer, University of Tennessee.

WRITINGS:

The Ecstatic Whitman: Literary Shamanism and the Crisis of the Union, Ohio State University Press (Columbus, OH), 1986.

The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, Belknap Press (Cambridge, MA), 1995.

In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line, Belknap Press (Cambridge, MA), 2006.

(Editor) The Cambridge Companion to the Harlem Renaissance, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including American Literary History, African American Review, and Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

George Hutchinson is a writer and academician who focuses on issues of race, the Harlem Renaissance, and the works of Walt Whitman. Raised in Indianapolis, Hutchinson graduated from Brown University in 1975 and immediately set off for Burkina Faso, where he worked with the U.S. Peace Corps for two years. Upon his return to the United States, he completed his M.A. and Ph.D. at Indiana University, Bloomington, and began a career in academia. During his nearly twenty-year tenure at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Hutchinson worked his way to the position of chair of American Studies Program and the Kenneth Curry Chair of English. In 2000 he relocated to Indiana University to accept the newly created position of Booth Tarkington Chair of Literary Studies.

Hutchinson's The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White is divided into three parts, including the rise of intellectualism and scholarship surrounding the period, a survey of the literary institutions that aided the movement, and an in-depth study of Alain Locke's 1925 anthology, The New Negro, and its role in the Renaissance. Claudia Tate, writing in the African American Review, called the book "an impressive study in scope, detail, and analysis." Tate concluded that The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White "presents the rich and complex interplay between the modern cultural nationalisms of black and white America that characterized the decade of the 1920s and its aftermath." College Literature contributor Allison Berg stated: "Hutchinson's exhaustive analysis of the institutional and intellectual contexts of the Harlem Renaissance makes a major contribution to the field, both by establishing the interdependence of black and white intellectual formations and by debunking some of the most cherished myths about the era."

Nearly a decade later, Hutchinson published again on the subject with In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line. This biography covers the life of Nella Larsen (1891-1964), a Harlem Renaissance writer born to a white Danish seamstress and a black laborer from the U.S. Virgin Islands (at that time, part of Denmark). This "scandalous" race mixing was made worse for Larsen when her mother married a white man and had other children, effectively making Larsen the black sheep of the family. Forced out of her home by age sixteen, she made a living for herself in New York and Alabama, and studied in Copenhagen, Denmark. Larsen's upbringing as a mixed-race child, not entirely accepted by either race, played a prominent role in her writing. Evelyn C. White in the Washington Post Book World called it an "exhaustive and masterfully rendered narrative." Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush found that the book was a "sparkling examination of a critical period in American racial and literary development." In the Black Issues Book Review, Sandra Rattley observed that "Hutchinson demonstrates a keen capacity for meticulous research."

Hutchinson told CA: "As a child, I loved writing fiction, beginning in about fourth grade. By high school I began to enjoy writing research papers for school, and a fascination for research as well as writing has remained throughout my life. It is amazing what one can discover if one looks hard enough, and the creative, self-expressive aspect of writing still enthralls me. I've been most influenced as a scholar by my maternal grandfather's reputation for scholarly boldness and integrity (he was a geologist) and by my mother's emphasis on being ‘modern’ and open to the new but retaining a sense of quality and what will last. My experience as a well digger in Africa completely transformed my understanding of American culture and race. I tend to write counter to intellectual fads while trying to expand our understanding of the possible in the past and present. I have also been much influenced by being the white father of black or biracial sons; it has affected my life profoundly. I was rather surprised by the generally very positive reception of The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White and In Search of Nella Larsen, because in both books I was writing against what I considered deeply entrenched prejudices in American literary scholarship. When The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White came out (a book I honestly didn't think anyone would publish, but was snapped up by a wonderful editor), I discovered that young scholars from all over had been waiting for such an argument about the inextricability of ‘black’ and ‘white’ in American culture. I loved working on [both] books, but perhaps In Search of Nella Larsen is my favorite because it took me on fascinating journeys, literally, and the writing itself demanded that I be more creative in evoking places, scenes, people, and handling narration. The research was incredibly exhilarating, full of discoveries. I hope my books will inspire people to keep questioning received wisdom, especially about race, and to attend to the truths that destabilize old habits of mind, the truths our experience (as long as we remain open to new experience) often leads us to intuit before we can articulate them."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African American Review, fall, 1997, Claudia Tate, review of The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White.

Black Issues Book Review, September 1, 2006, Sandra Rattley, review of In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line, p. 40.

Booklist, May 15, 2006, Vanessa Bush, review of In Search of Nella Larsen, p. 16.

College Literature, fall, 1998, Allison Berg, review of The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White.

Ebony, August 1, 2006, review of In Search of Nella Larsen, p. 30.

New York Times Book Review, August 27, 2006, Tara McKelvey, review of In Search of Nella Larsen, p. 20.

Research in African Literatures, fall, 2000, Joseph McLaren, review of The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White.

Washington Post Book World, May 21, 2006, Evelyn C. White, review of In Search of Nella Larsen, p. 14.

ONLINE

Indiana University Web site,http://www.indiana.edu/ (August 18, 2007), author profile.