ABOUT DAVID LEVERING LEWIS

 David Levering Lewis is a professor of history emeritus at New York University. His scholarly work ranges over millennia and continents. In his eight monographs he has explored a wide variety of themes and individuals, in many instances synthesizing a massive amount of material and bringing to each project a fresh, bold perspective. He has received accolades in the form of a MacArthur Fellowship (1999–2004), the Bancroft Prize in American History, two Pulitzer Prizes (for his two-volume biography of W. E. B. Du Bois), and the Parkman Prize, among other awards. In 2009 President Barack Obama presented him with the National Humanities Medal.

Since 2003 Lewis has taught at New York University. He is perhaps best known for his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois, which is widely regarded as the standard, definitive study of this remarkable scholar-cum-activist. (Lewis’s winning two Pulitzers in back-to-back years in the same category—Biography—is a feat that has not been matched before or since.) At the same time, his scholarly reach is truly impressive, for he has made significant scholarly interventions in a number of seemingly disparate fields—for example, early 20th-century French anti-Semitism, African resistance to European colonialism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the life of Republican politician Wendell Willkie.

Lewis’s erudition, capacious scholarly reach, and brilliant contributions to the literature establish him as one of today’s most distinguished historians. He has enlightened audiences in and outside the academy on the history and meaning of ideologies, such as racism, and on the significance of social movements around the world through time.

Education

Lewis enrolled at Fisk University at the age of 15 and received his Bachelor of Arts in history and philosophy in 1957. He received his Master of Arts in U.S. history from Columbia University in 1959. Ate age 26, Lewis was awarded a doctorate in modern European history from the London School of Economics (1962).

Honors and Awards

  • Carter Woodson Centennial Scholar Medallion

  • Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Prize

  • National Humanities Medal

  • Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, spring 2008

  • John Hope Franklin Award, Inaugural Medalist

  • Medal or Distinguished Service to Education, Columbias Teacher’s College

  • Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

  • Pulitzer Prize for Biography

  • John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship

  • J.E.K. Aggrey Medal of the Phelps Stokes Fund

  • National Conference of Black Political Scientists Outstanding Book Award

  • Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award

  • Pulitzer Prize for Biography

  • Francis Parkman Prize in History

  • Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy

  • Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

  • English Speaking Union Book Award

  • Black Caucus of the American Library Association

  • National Book Award Finalist, Nonfiction

  • Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

  • Rutgers University Trustees Award for Distinguished

    Research

  • Fellow at the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

  • Fellow at the National Humanities Center

  • Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences

  • Fulbright Travel Grant to France

  • Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

  • Commissioned by American Association for State and Local History to write the Bicentennial History of the District of Columbia

  • Fellow at the Drug Abuse Council Inc., of The Ford Foundation

  • American Council of Learned Societies Research Grant

  • Social Science Research Council Research Grant

  • American Philosophical Society Research Grant

  • Phi Beta Kappa, Fisk University