Gerald Early

Gerald Lyn Early is an American essayist and culture critic who specializes in African American literature, sports, jazz, and the cultural history of the United States. He is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University in St. Louis, where he has taught since 1982, and won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism for his book The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture[1][2].