McKinley Melton received his PhD from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and his BA in English and African American Studies from Duke University. Professor Melton's teaching interests are in literatures of African and African Diaspora, most specifically 19th- and 20th-century African American literature. His courses are designed to engage the intersections of social, political, and cultural movements as part of a critical approach to Africana literature. Melton's research focuses primarily on spiritual and religious traditions throughout the Black diaspora and the influence of spirituality on diasporan literary, artistic, and cultural expressions. Professor Melton's work has been published in the anthology The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Politics, Arts, and Letters (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) and in the forthcoming volume James Baldwin: Challenging Authors, part of the Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (Sense Publishers, in press.)