Houston Baker

Houston Alfred Baker Jr. (born March 22, 1943) is an American scholar specializing in African-American literature and Distinguished University Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Baker served as president of the Modern Language Association, editor of the journal American Literature, and has authored several books, including The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature, and Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing. Baker was included in the 2006 textbook Fifty Key Literary Theorists, by Richard J. Lane.