A Conversation with Kenneth A. McClane

Abstract

Professor Kenneth McClane reflects on his experience as a Cornell freshman, as a member of the Arts College undergraduate College Scholars Program, as a graduate student in the Cornell English Department, and as the distinguished W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Literature at Cornell. He shares memories of growing up in a Harlem household that entertained prominent participants in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. He describes his experience as a poet and autobiographical essayist, as well as a teacher in Cornell’s creative writing program (which happened to include assignment to an office in Goldwin Smith Hall once used by Vladimir Nabokov), and reflects on his role as a member of two Cornell presidential search committees conducted by the Cornell Board of Trustees.