Chinese scholars celebrate Gates
Specialists in African-American and American literature from across China gathered at the Beijing Foreign Studies University to honor Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. The event, “The China National Conference on African American Literary Studies and the Releasing of H.L. Gates Jr.’s Works in Chinese Translation,” brought together more than 50 professors and graduate students who presented seminar papers about Gates’ work and the African-American literary canon. The Dec. 11-12 event also marked Gates’ 60th birthday. Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, is director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard. Gates co-edited the first four volumes of “The Image of the Black in Western Art,” just published by the Harvard University Press. His newest book, “Black in Latin America,” will be published in the spring. He was one of only two academics named to Ebony Magazine’s Power 100 list for 2010. Literary scholars in China...