Doors (Paperback)

"Doors: Reflections on an HBCU Career" provocatively combines the story of a long teaching career at a "historically black college or university" with relevant and insightful observations on how race affects what is taught, how it is taught, and who teaches. The book reveals how the author’s teaching of American culture as a subject was influenced by American culture itself. Lawson's memoir about being a minority within a minority thus offers insights about how society's ways and values impact American higher education--and how American higher education affects society's ways and values. No college or university is simply an ivory tower, isolated from the world at large, where scholars dispassionately pursue purely academic interests. Egos and vested interests are at play at any institution, educational or otherwise. Lawson relates how policies and procedures of the university often brought the revelation that race and what he calls “minoritiness” are not the same thing—that, in fact, being a minority but white taught memorable lessons about being black. He concludes that American discourse on race often confuses race per se with minority status and that his insights about African American literature came not only from his working environment and his studies, but also from being a minority. Lawson also dramatizes startling episodes in his career which were provoked by “outside” events: the publication of Alex Haley’s “Roots,” the perceived threat of merging with a nearby white college, the O. J. Simpson trials, and his lecturing in Europe. A memoir which brings together issues of higher education, race, minority status, and American literature is truly multifaceted.

Benjamin S. Lawson has had a long and productive career as a scholar and educator. A Midwesterner with academic degrees from Purdue University, Indiana University, and Bowling Green State University, he taught for thirty-two years at a historically African American university in the South. During these years he won several awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the School of Criticism and Theory for further summer study. Invitations and awards also led to his lecturing for four semesters in Europe at the University of Helsinki in Finland, University College London, and Utrecht University in the Netherlands (where he was the Fulbright Commission-sponsored "Walt Whitman Chair of American Literature"). For three subsequent years he served on the national Fulbright committee which selects distinguished American lecturers for Europe and Canada. More recently, he has served as an adjunct professor of English at Florida State University and performed as an enrichment speaker aboard cruise ships. Benjamin Lawson's major scholarly interest is American literature from 1840 until 1940. He has spoken at many academic conferences and published articles on Herman Melville, Charles Chesnutt, Joaquin Miller, Elizabeth Gaskell, James Weldon Johnson, William Faulkner, and George Schuyler. His books include "Joaquin Miller" in the Western Writers Series and "Rereading the Revolution: The Turn-of-the-Century American Revolutionary War Novel." Lawson is fascinated by the effects of culture, society, and history on works of literature. He extends this fascination from literature to life in his memoir "Doors: Reflections on an HBCU Career" (Historically Black College or University), which combines a life story with observations on the role of race and minority status in American higher education and American literature.