Dr. McBride's Biographical Note

Dr. Dwight A. McBride is a leading scholar of race and literary studies. He has published numerous books, essays, articles, and edited volumes that examine connections between race theory, black studies, and identity politics. His most recent publication is the co-edited volume A Melvin Dixon: Critical Reader, a collection of critical essays on literature and life from the African American activist and scholar.

Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality, a collection of his personal essays offering contemporary cultural criticism, was a nominee for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award and the 2006 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. In 2005, Dr. McBride garnered the Best Special Issue Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for the special issue of Public Culture he co-edited titled "100 Years of the 'Souls of Black Folk': A Celebration of W.E.B. DuBois." He is the editor of James Baldwin Now and co-editor of a special issue of Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters titled "Plum Nelly: New Essays in Black Queer Studies." Both works received special citations in 2000 from the Crompton-Noll Award Committee of the Modern Language Association for their significant contribution to lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender studies.

Dr. McBride's other works include Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bi-Sexual African American Fiction, a co-edited volume that earned the 2002 Lambda Literary Award for best fiction anthology, and Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony. He also serves as co-editor of "The New Black Studies Series" published by the University of Illinois Press. He is currently working on two book manuscripts titled "Poetics, Politics, and Phillis Wheatley" and "White Lies in the Republic: Race Sexuality and Politics."

Dr. McBride received his undergraduate degree in English and African American Studies at Princeton University. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. McBride was on the faculty previously at UIC from 1999 to 2002. He began as an assistant professor of English and African American studies and advanced to associate professor in 2001. He was head of the department of African American studies at UIC from 2001 to 2002 before accepting a position as chair of the department of African American Studies at Northwestern University. He returned to UIC in fall of 2007 as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.