William J. Maxwell

William J. Maxwell is a professor of English and African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he has taught modern American and African American literatures since 2009. He is the author of the books F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature (2015), which won an American Book Award, and New Negro, Old Left: African American Writing and Communism Between the Wars (1999). He is the editor of the collection James Baldwin: The FBI File (2017) and of Claude McKay’s Complete Poems (2004). His essays and reviews have appeared in academic and popular journals including African American Review, The American Historical Review, American Literary History, American Literature, Callaloo, Harper’s, The Irish Times, The Journal of American History, Modernism/Modernity, Politico, Publishers Weekly, Salon, and the London Times Literary Supplement.