Prof. Craig Werner
Craig Werner teaches literature,
music and cultural history. A member of the Nominating Committee of the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame, he has written liner notes for re-releases of classic
soul albums and contributed to numerous radio and television documentaries on
topics ranging from the Harlem Renaissance to Motown. He has won numerous teaching
awards including the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching;
the English Graduate Student Association's Teaching Excellence Award; Best Summer
School Course from the National Association of Summer School Sessions as part
of the teaching team for "Sites and Sounds of the Freedom Struggle."
Education
B.A., summa cum laude, Colorado
College, 1973
Ph.D. in English, University of Illinois, 1979.
Books
Higher Ground:
Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and the Rise & Fall of American
Soul
A Change Is Gonna Come Music, Race & the Soul of America (revised edition)
Up Around the Bend An Oral History of Creedence Clearwater Revival
Playing the Changes From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse
Gold-bugs and the Power of Blackness Re-reading Poe
Black Women Novelists An Annotated Bibliography
Adrienne Rich The Poet and Her Critics
James Joyce's Dubliners A Pluralistic World
Paradoxical Resolutions James Joyce and Contemporary American Fiction
Publications:
“The Usonian Journals: Adrienne Rich’s Political Vision,”
Virginia Quarterly Review (April 2006)
“Critical Issues in African American Music,” forthcoming in The
Columbia Guide to African American History, ed. John Bracey, Cornell University
Press, 2006
“The Black Seventies,” liner notes to Can You Dig It? The Seventies
Soul Box, Rhino Records, 2002.
Interests
African American music, cultural
history and literature; multicultural literature; multicultural responses to
Joyce, Faulkner, Whitman, and Shakespeare
Courses Taught
Afro-American Studies
155:
Multicultural Literature
Afro-American Studies 156:
Black Music and American Cultural History
Afro-American Studies 525: Major Authors
James Baldwin
Richard Wright
Zora Neale Hurston
Afro-American Studies 672: Selected Topics in Afro-American Literature:
Topic: “Contemporary Multicultural Literature”
Topic: “Faulkner and Multicultural Fiction”
Topic: “Ulysses and the Multicultural Novel”
Topic: “Whitman and Multicultural Poetry”
Afro-American Studies 675: Selected Topics in Afro-American Culture:
Topic: “Hip-Hop Culture”
Topic: “The Gospel Vision in African American Culture”
Topic: “Soul Music and the Civil Rights Movement”
Topic: “Yusef Komunyakaa and Contemporary African American
Poetry”
Topic: “James Baldwin and Billie Holiday”
ILS 254:
Science and Literature
ILS 275 and 400:
Shakespeare and the Modern World
The Vietnam Era
Writing the Two Cultures: Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Powers
The Book as World: Don Quixote, Moby-Dick and Gravitys
Rainbow
Degrees
Bachelor
of Arts
Master
of Arts
Ph.D.
minor
Courses
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staff
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members
Teaching assistants
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staff
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