That means it will reach a broad market of schools and colleges, an important consideration to Gates, who says, "I'm concerned with institution building." "We were making a pioneering statement about the field," Gates says, "and I wanted to democratize that process as much as possible, so that's why I invited so many people to be editors." Of course, this volume is not the first anthology of African-American literature, but it is the first to bear the Norton imprimatur. These nine wrote the introductory essays to each of the seven sections, selected the works, and provided explicative notes. McKay, professor of American and Afro-American literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, chose nine scholars to act as period editors, "people whose judgment we trusted, and indeed, admired," says Gates. Now, with the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Gates has repeated that formula. People sat up and took notice of this critical mass. Since his arrival in 1991, when the department was small and struggling, Gates has attracted some of the country's most celebrated black scholars to the Harvard faculty. Take Harvard's Afro-American studies department, of which he is the chairman. Henry Louis Gates understands that the power to make things happen resides in people, and he is a master at assembling them. Also see Out with the Sake, In with the Ale.
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