(born 1950) Widely considered, since publication of The Signifying Monkey (1988), the dean of letters among African American intellectuals, reinforced by his regular contributions to journals like The New Yorker. Also noted for his impact on black studies with the establishment, first at Duke and then at Harvard, of strong liberally inclined African American studies departments, carving out a middle ground between the more Afrocentric programs of Molefi Kete Asante and Leonard Jeffries, and the Marxist orientations of intellectuals like Manning Marable and Robin D.G. Kelley. Gates has also promoted the study of gender in edited work on black women writers (for example Reading Black, Reading Feminist, 1990). His memoir, Colored People, was published in 1994.