James De Jongh

JAMES de JONGH (B.A. Williams, ‘64, M.A. Yale, ‘67, Ph.D., New York University, ‘83) is Professor of English emeritus of The City College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York (CUNY), and director emeritus of the CUNY Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC). He is the author of several plays, including the critically acclaimed Do Lord Remember Me (New York; Samuel French, Inc., 1983) and Play to Win (Samuel French, 1993), with Carles Cleveland & Jimi Foster (New York; Samuel French, Inc., 1993), a musical for young audiences commissioned by Theatreworks USA, which won an AUDELCO Recognition Award, and a novel, City Cool: A Ritual of Belonging (Random House, 1978) with Carles Cleveland.

Professor de Jongh’s literary criticism includes, Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge U. Press, 1990 and 2010), and “The Poet Speaks of Places: A Close Reading of Langston Hughes’ Literary Use of Place” in A Historical Guide to Langston Hughes (Oxford U. Press, 2004).

De Jongh has been, a contributor to a number of reference works, including The Oxford Companion to African American Literature and The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History, and a contributing editor on topics of theater history for Black Masks magazine. Other credits include: Up South (Documentary Screenwriter), The American Social History Project.