NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE               DATE: 2/07/08 CONTACT : LESLIE SCHALER, COMMUNICATION ASST., (413) 545-0162   UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES HOSTS 14TH ANNUAL DU BOIS LECTURE “W.E.B. Du Bois and Ralph Ellison”  ~ a talk by Arnold Rampersad ~   Amherst, MA – The UMass Amherst Libraries hosts the 14th Annual Du Bois Lecture, “W.E.B. Du Bois and Ralph Ellison” by Arnold Rampersad, Thursday, February 28, 2008 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on the Lower Level, Du Bois Library, UMass Amherst.  The event, sponsored by the UMass Amherst Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives Department, is free and open to the public. The Library marks Du Bois' birthday each year with a lecture by a distinguished scholar on a topic relating to Du Bois' life and legacy. A distinguished biographer and literary critic, Arnold Rampersad is the Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford University.  A scholar of race and American literature and the Harlem Renaissance, Rampersad has written books on W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and most recently, Ralph Ellison.  He has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and was a 1991 recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant.”  He is a recipient of fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Professor Rampersad has recently published Ralph Ellison, a biography of the novelist (1914-1994).  His other books include The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. DuBois (1976); The Life of Langston Hughes (2 vols., 1986, 1988); Days of Grace: A Memoir (1993), co-authored with Arthur Ashe; and Jackie Robinson: A Biography (1997).  In addition, he has edited several volumes including Collected Poems of Langston Hughes; the Library of America edition of works by Richard Wright, with revised individual editions of Native Son and Black Boy; and (as co-editor with Deborah McDowell) Slavery and the Literary Imagination.  He was also co-editor, with Shelley Fisher Fishkin, of the Race and American Culture book series published by Oxford University Press.  His teaching covers such areas as nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature; American autobiography; race and American literature; and African-American literature. For more information contact Robert Cox, Special Collections and University Archives, (413) 545-6842 or rscox@library.umass.edu.