Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Winner of the Barry Prize, 2024

The prize citation for Dr. Gates’ Barry Prize reads:

With tenacity, sensitivity, and verve, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has transformed literary and social studies by cultivating our appreciation of African and African-American literature. His tireless efforts in unearthing and explicating previously neglected contributions has been matched by his uncompromising insistence that we engage great works drawn from diverse traditions of thought and practice on their own terms, as part of our shared human patrimony. The Academy honors Dr. Gates’ distinguished contributions to humanity’s growing capacity to recognize, and be uplifted by, diverse forms of literary excellence.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. An Emmy- and Peabody-Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has published numerous books and produced and hosted an array of documentary films. He is a recipient of a number of honorary degrees, including from his alma mater, the University of Cambridge, and most recently, The London School of Economics. He was a member of the first class of “genius grants” awarded by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, and in 1998 he became the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 2001 he discovered the first novel written by a Black female author, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, by Hannah Craft. A former chair of the Pulitzer Prize board, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and serves on a wide array of boards, including the New York Public Library, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Aspen Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Library of America, and the Studio Museum of Harlem.

October 2024