Thabiti Lewis teaches African American Literature, Multi-Ethnic Literature, and American Studies courses. He addresses issues of masculinity and race as well as how these issues are represented in film. He has written about masculinity, race and sport, feminism and the writer Toni Cade Bambara. Lewis’s ideas have appeared in several book chapters, journals, Opinion Editorials, and radio commentaries.
He obtained a doctorate in English from Saint Louis University with a special focus on American literature and culture between the 1950s-1990s and Black Feminist writer Toni Cade Bambara. While completing his doctorate he earned a fellowship at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
Research Interests:
An Associate Professor of English at Washington State University Vancouver he teaches contemporary American literature, specializing in Multicultural literature and Black American literature. He also teaches creative non-fiction and humanities courses with a popular culture emphasis. Lewis, who joined the WSU faculty in 2007, has published widely in the areas of American literature, masculinity, African American Studies, and popular culture (music and sports).
Recent Publications:
In December of 2010, he published a pioneering book about sports, race, and American culture, Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America (Third World Press). Before this, he edited and co-edited special issues of journals exploring the topics African American Studies and Masculinity (The Willamette Journal and AmeriQuests Journal). He is the editor of Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara (University Press of Mississippi) and is completing a book-length study about the liberation impulse that informs the art of the politics in the fiction of the writer Toni Cade Bambara. He is also at work on a study of the performance of heroism and the making of gender and race within four American sports museum spaces.