Wright, John S. 1946- (John Samuel Wright)

PERSONAL:

Born 1946. Education: University of Minnesota, B.E.E., M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of African American and African Studies, University of Minnesota, 812 Social Science Bldg., 267 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55455. E-mail—wrigh003@umn.edu.

CAREER:

Carleton College, Northfield, MN, chair and associate professor of African and African-American studies and associate professor of English, 1973-84; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, associate professor, 1984-2007, professor of African American and African studies and associate professor of English, 2007—.

WRITINGS:

Shadowing Ralph Ellison, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2006.

Contributor to anthologies, including New Essays on "Invisible Man," edited by R.O'Meally, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1988; Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, edited by L. May, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1989; American Literature, Culture, and Ideology, edited by B. Voloshin, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1990; and The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1995. Contributor to periodicals, including A View from the Loft, Georgia Review, and the Guthrie Program magazine.

SIDELIGHTS:

John S. Wright had an unlikely start as a writer, initially studying and earning a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota. However, upon continuing his education, Wright switched his focus to literature, earning a master's degree in English and American literature and a doctorate in American studies. He then went on to teach, first at Carlton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and then at his alma mater. Wright's area of research interest includes Afro-American studies, literature, and film, including intellectual history and popular culture, folklore and oral tradition, and various historical and cultural African American movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance, Negritude, and the Black Arts Movement. He has done extensive research on the life and work of African American author Ralph Ellison, author of the acclaimed novel Invisible Man, resulting in his first book, Shadowing Ralph Ellison, which was published in 2006. Wright makes use of Ellison's life span, which covered the majority of the twentieth century, to link the events in Ellison's life and career to the political and cultural events of significance for African Americans during the same period. In a review for the University of Minnesota Web site, one contributor called Wright's effort "an eloquent and engaging access point to black intellectual history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

ONLINE

University of Minnesota Web site,http://www1.umn.edu/ (June 27, 2007), review of Shadowing Ralph Ellison.

University of Minnesota Department of African American Studies Web site,http://www.afroam.umn.edu/ (June 27, 2007), faculty biography.