Scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. at Illinois State, Oct. 4

Preeminent writer, scholar and critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr., will speak Thursday, Oct. 4, at 7:30 p.m. in Capen Auditorium in Illinois State University’s Edwards Hall. The speech, which is part of the University’s sesquicentennial celebration, is free and open to the public.

Gates has used his position as one of the country's most respected scholars to promote his theory of education reform, which calls for the expansion of black studies programs at universities nationwide and a broadening of the literature curriculum to include in-depth study of the works of authors from non-Western cultures. His direct, often acerbic approach has won praise from educators who share his ideology and offended others in more conservative circles.

His recent book, “Finding Oprah’s Roots: Finding Your Own,” grew out of a PBS special and traces Oprah Winfrey’s roots to Liberia and her first known matrilineal ancestor, a woman sold into slavery.

Gates has discovered and restored thousands of works by African American writers, most notably Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig (1859), which is widely believed to be the first novel by a black American. He outlined his theory of “signifyin'” in Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self (1987) and The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988).

Gates graduated from Yale in 1973. He took a year off as an undergraduate to travel to East Africa, where he worked in a hospital as an anesthetist. He earned a M.A. and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, where he studied under Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka.  Gates was the university's first black American to earn a Ph.D. He won a MacArthur Genius Award in 1981 and currently serves as the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University.