McKinley E. Melton earned his PhD from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  Prior to joining the Gettysburg College faculty, Dr. Melton was a visiting assistant professor of literature at Hampshire College from 2007-2012. He is also the recipient of a 2015 Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and was a 2015-16 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University. 

Dr. Melton's research--including his current book project, Along Their Own Way: Manhood, Spirituality, and Survival in Black Diasporan Literature--focuses primarily on spiritual and religious traditions throughout the modern black diaspora and their influence on diasporan literary, artistic, and cultural expressions.  Dr. Melton's active scholarly agenda also includes published essays on the work and writing of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Danez Smith, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Melton's teaching focuses primarily on 20th Century African American and African diasporan literatures and his courses are designed to engage the intersections of social, political, and cultural movements as part of a critical approach to Africana literatures. Recently offered courses include:

• FYS 149-3 - "Black Superheroes in American Popular Culture: From Nat Turner to Netflix"
• ENG 250 - "Literature of the Civil Rights Movement"
• ENG 252 - "Renaissance, Resistance, and Revolution: 20th Century African American Literature"
• ENG 263 - "Voice and Visibility: African Americans and the Power of Spoken Word"
• ENG 350 - "To Illuminate the World: James Baldwin in Fiction and Essays"
• ENG 362 - "Blackness and the Rainbow: LGBTQ African American Literature"
• ENG 378 - "I've Got a Testimony: Autobiography in African American Narrative"
• ENG 403 - "The Holy Bible and African American Literature and Culture"