Hampshire College

McKinley Melton, visiting assistant professor of literature, holds a B.A. in English and a B.A. in African and African American Studies from Duke University. He is completing his doctoral work in the W.E.B. Du Bois department of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Professor Melton's research and teaching interests are in literatures of Africa and the African Diaspora, most specifically 19th and 20th century African American Literature; spiritual and religious traditions throughout traditional and contemporary African diasporic communities; 20th century American literature; intersections of literary, cultural, and political movements; and the representations of social, political, and cultural belief systems in literary texts.

Professor Melton is also the author of “Speak it into Existence: James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones and the Power of Self-Definition in the New Negro Harlem Renaissance,” in the forthcoming edited volume The Harlem Renaissance: Politics, Arts, and Letters (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).

Affiliations
School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies

Recent Courses
HACU-0243: I've Got a Testimony: Autobiography in African American Narrative (Spring 2012)
HACU-0158: Voice and Visibility: African Americans and the Power of Spoken Word (Spring 2012)
HACU-0283: This Film Inspired By...: Screening Multicultural Literature (Fall 2011)
HACU-0144: Renaissance, Resistance, and Revolution: 20th Century African American Literature (Fall 2011)