born Sept. 16, 1950, Keyser, W.Va., U.S.
U.S. critic and scholar.
Gates attended Yale University and the University of Cambridge. He has chaired Harvard University's department of Afro-American Studies for many years. In such works as Figures in Black (1987) and The Signifying Monkey (1988) he has used the term signifyin' to represent a practice that can link African and African American literary histories; his other books include Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (1998). He has edited many anthologies, including Reading Black, Reading Feminist (1990) and the Norton Anthology of African American Writers (1997), and has restored and edited many lost works by black writers. He writes frequently to a general public, notably in The New Yorker , and he wrote the television series Wonders of the African World (1999).