Anthony Stewart

Anthony Stewart is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Dalhousie University. His main research interest is 20th-century African American literature and culture. He also teaches 20th-century British literature and is the author of George Orwell, Doubleness, and the Value of Decency (Routledge, 2003).

Stewart’s latest book, You Must Be a Basketball Player: Rethinking Integration in the University (Fernwood, 2009), argues that the “big three” disciplines in the humanities (English, history, and philosophy departments) must lead the way toward a more integrated professional class, starting with their own departmental hiring practices. Using personal anecdotes and observations about life in the university, Stewart asserts that the university must be more conscious of the signals it sends out regarding who is and who is not welcome inside its walls, and demonstrates that the ostensible gold standard of merit must be seen in the conditional terms practiced every day within Canadian society.

Stewart has published essays on Ralph Ellison, Percival Everett, August Wilson, and representations of the African American male athlete. He currently has two books under contract. One is a critical monograph on the work of Percival Everett, tentatively entitled Approximate Gestures: The Meaning of the Between in the Fiction of Percival Everett, under contract with Louisiana State University Press. The second is tentatively entitled When I Grew Taller Than My Father: How We Occupy Privilege, under contract with Fernwood Publishing.