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Columns::March 25, 2002
India Initiative leads to cooperative biotechnology research agreement
Han Park is named University Professor
Governor recognizes emeritus VP’s ‘humanitarian’ effort
Institutional Diversity office officially opens
Campus memorial proposal gets University Council approval
Moving forward: Education professor’s program builds excellence in young men
Campus Closeup
Grady College names King its new department head for PR, advertising
Kudos
Back to school
Something to talk about
Campus News
Noted writer appointed first Hamilton Holmes Professor
By Phil Williams
phil@franklin.uga.edu
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| Reginald McKnight |
Reginald McKnight, currently a professor of English at the University of Michigan, has been named the first Hamilton Holmes Professor at the University of Georgia. McKnight, a nationally known novelist and writer, will join the Creative Writing Program in UGA’s department of English starting this summer.
The new professorship honors the late Hamilton Holmes, one of the first two African-American students at UGA. Holmes, who achieved a distinguished career as a physician and teacher in the Atlanta area, died in 1995.
“We are delighted to have someone of Reginald McKnight’s stature accept the Hamilton Holmes Professorship,” says Dean Wyatt Anderson of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “We believe he will help develop and expand our Creative Writing Program in ways that will further the ideals that motivated the endowment of the professorship.”
McKnight, who will join UGA at the rank of full professor, was one of 13 candidates and four finalists considered for the Holmes Professorship. Nominations were reviewed by a committee of senior faculty in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, chaired by then-Vice President for Instruction Thomas Dyer. The four finalists for the position were invited to campus for presentations and interviews.
“I haven’t felt this kind of excitement and anticipation in all my years as a university professor,” says McKnight. “I am hopeful that I can serve the university and the community in a manner befitting the ideals that inspired the creation of the Hamilton Holmes Professorship.”
McKnight is the author of two novels, three short story collections and two non-fiction collections. He has won numerous awards, including the Drue Heinz Prize, a Pushcart Prize, two Kenyon Review awards and a special citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation.
His latest book is the novel He Sleeps, which was featured in October on National Public Radio. His first novel was I Get on the Bus (1990) and his short story collections include Moustapha’s Eclipse (1988), The Kind of Light that Shines on Texas (1992) and White Boys (1998). His two non-fiction works are African American Wisdom (1994) and Wisdom of the African World (1996).
McKnight’s educational background includes an associate’s degree from Pikes Peak Community College, a bachelor’s degree from Colorado College and a master’s degree with an emphasis in creative writing from the University of Denver.
He has published in numerous magazines, and two of his books have been translated into Dutch and French. He has published work in The Kenyon Review, Callaloo, the Massachusetts Review and Prairie Schooner, among many journals and magazines. He has written book reviews for the Washington Post Book World, Transition, The New York Times Book Review and others.
His stories have been in numerous anthologies, including New Stories from the South from Algonquin Press and Prize Stories of 1990: The O. Henry Awards.
His long teaching career has included visiting professorships and faculty appointments. He taught English at the American Cultural Center in Dakar, Senegal, in 1981-82, and later taught at several colleges in Colorado and elsewhere before becoming an assistant professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh in 1988. He remained there until 1991 when he accepted a position as associate professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, also in Pittsburgh. He became a professor of English in the creative writing program at the University of Maryland in 1994 and stayed there until 2000 when he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan. |
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