Robert Burns Stepto

Robert Burns Stepto, Ph.D., Stanford University, 1974, is Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, and English. At Yale since 1974, he has served as Department Chair, Director of Undergraduate Studies (1974–77) and Director of Graduate Studies (1978–81; 1985–89, Spring 1994). His publications include Blue As The Lake (1998), From Behind The Veil: A Study of Afro–American Narrative (1979; 1991) and The Selected Poems of Jay Wright (1987). He has also co–edited (with Michael S. Harper) Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro–American Literature, Art and Scholarship, (with Dexter Fisher) Afro–American Literature: The Reconstruction of Instruction (1979), and (with D. McQuade et al.) The Harper American Literature (1993), for which he is the twentieth–century poetry editor. He has been an editor for journals such as American Literature, American Quarterly, and Callaloo. Professor Stepto teaches courses on American autobiography, African American poetry, fiction, and drama.