Cornel West

Professor West talked about his career and his entire body of work and responded to audience telephone calls, faxes and electronic mail. Professor West has written or edited more than twenty books, on topics ranging from religion and philosophy to politics and race. His most recent books are The Cornel West Reader (1999) and The African-American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Country, (2000, with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) His first book, written in his 20s, was Prophecy Deliverance!: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (1982). He has also written Prophetic Fragments (1988), The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (1989), The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought (1991), Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (1991, with bell hooks), Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism (1993, Volumes 1 & 2), Race Matters (1993), Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (1993), White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side (1994, by James Snead, edited with Colin MacCabe), Jews and Blacks: A Dialogue on Race, Religion, and Culture in America (1995, with Michael Lerner), The Future of the Race (1996, with Henry Lewis Gates, Jr.), Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America (1997), The Future of American Progressivism: An Initiative for Political and Economic Reform (1998, with Roberto Mangabeira Unger), and The War Against Parents (1998, with Sylvia Ann Hewlett). He is the editor of Post-Analytic Philosophy (1985, with John Rajchman), and Struggle in the Promised Land (1997, with Jack Salzman). In September 2001 Professor West released a spoken-word CD called “Sketches of My Culture.” close