For a Newcomer, a Sort of Homecoming

For Phillip Brian Harper, starting his new position at Harvard this fall is a homecoming, of sorts.

Harper, one of four new professors in the recently rejuvenated Afro-American Studies Department, has never actually been a student or teacher at Harvard. But nonetheless he is being reunited with his old mentor and dissertation advisor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., who last spring accepted an offer to chair the Afro-Am Department.

Despite being a bit apprehensive at the high expectations focused on the new group of professors, Harper says he is exhilarated to be surrounded by some of the top scholars of Afro-American literature, including Gates, Werner Sollors, Babarbra E. Johnson and K. Anthony Appiah.

"Here, I have the very strong feeling that there is a rebirth," says Harper, who is an assistant professor in both the Afro-Am and English Departments.

Harper did not have quite as much company at Brandeis, where he taught from 1988 until last year and where he was the school's lone Afro-American literature scholar. "I loved it at Brandeis, but by the end of last year I was exhausted," he says.

Harper's burdensome load did not prevent him from amassing strong student support for the field in a very short time period, his colleagues at Brandeis attest.

"He is an extraordinary teacher. He succeeded in making Afro-Am a major interest with our undergraduates in only three years," says Micheal Gilmore, a professor of English and American literature at Brandeis. "He is the best young African-Americanist in the country."

Last year, Harper won Brandeis's Michael Walzer Award for Excellence in Teaching, a prize which was well deserved, says Eugene Goodheart, chair of the Brandeis English Department.

"He was a superb presence. It is a terrific loss," Goodheart says of Harper's departure from Brandeis. "He was a very successful teacher from the very beginning."

This fall, Harper will teach a junior tutorial in Afro-Am as well as an English course on Anglo-American modernism from 1890 to 1930. Next semester he will teach an Afro-Am course on the literature of the 1920's and English 90vt, "Social Marginality and Postmodern Culture," a subject which is the focus of his doctoral dissertation and forthcoming book.

Harper believes that the characters of postmodern literature, with its fragmented and disoriented personalities, are descriptive of the experience of Blacks, gays, women and other disenfrancised groups in America.

Harper's most recent published articles and research have dealt extensively with popular culture, music and television, interests the junior professor discovered through his study of literature.

"I have always had that interest [in popular culture], but I did not know how to address it in an intellectual capacity until I had studied literature," Harper says.

For Harper, there is an intense relationship between fiction and modern life, and it is that connection that fuels his interest in literature.

"What 20th century authors had to say had everything to do with larger sociological issues," he says. "I discovered that what interested me was not the literature per se but what did it mean to be in the 20th century."

Despite the fact that Harper's primary expertise lies in 20th century literature, Brandeis's Gilmore maintains that the young scholar has a unique ability also to bring early literature, particularly slave narratives, to life.

"He opened up an important part of the American literary past for the students," says Gilmore. "He has a very powerful way of finding something in the past that connects with the present."

Harvard's reputation for being rough on junior faculty is well-known, and before Harper came to Cambridge many people he talked to said they couldn't believe he was considering the move. But the University is not the only thing that makes him slightly uneasy.

Harper grew up in Detroit and attended the University of Michigan, a drastically different environment for Blacks than Boston, according to Harper. "I think it's tough to be a Black person in Boston," says Harper. "When I first came here I hated it. I'd never seen a place so racist."

The problem with the Boston area, he says, is the relative invisibility of its Black middle class. Time has tempered his distaste for the city, but it is still not a place he loves.

"It still boggles my mind that you can walk down Newbury St. or through Harvard Square and still see relatively few Black people," he says.

Still, despite his experience in Boston and Harvard's reputation, Harper remains eager to teach and study in what he considers his calling.

"That's the reason I went into this line of work," he says. "There is no other field you can think in such abstract ways and get paid to do it."