About

John Wright is a professor affiliated with the African American & African Studies department at the University of Minnesota. He holds an educational background that includes a BEE in Electrical Engineering, an MA in English and American Literature, and a PhD in American Studies, all from the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on the sociology of literature, American and Afro-American literature, the Black Arts Movement, feminist criticism, folklore and oral tradition, the Harlem Renaissance, and the intellectual history and popular culture associated with these areas. Wright has contributed to the scholarly understanding of African American culture and history through his publications, including entries in The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History, and works on figures such as Alain Locke and Ralph Ellison. His academic career includes teaching courses on American minority literature and the Harlem Renaissance, emphasizing his expertise in African American literary and cultural studies.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• History
• Economic history
• Chemical engineering
• Geography
• Metallurgy
• Composite material
• Nanotechnology
• Materials science
• Archaeology

Selected publications

• Clinical Pathologic Conference Case 6: An ulcerated lesion on the gingiva of an adolescent female

  Oral Surgery Oral Medicine Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology · 2025-05-31

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Clinicopathologic and molecular profile of HPV-related oral epithelial dysplasia and their progression to oral squamous cell carcinoma - a longitudinal study

  Oral Surgery Oral Medicine Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology · 2025-07-21

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The Rise and Fall of British Policy for Membership of Europe

  2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • History
  • Political Science
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Islamism and its Relation to Islam and the West: Common Themes and Varieties

  2021

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Geography
  Publisher

• POSS-enhanced colorless organic/inorganic nanocomposite (CORIN®) for atomic oxygen resistance in low earth orbit

  CEAS Space Journal · 2021 · 24 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Materials science
  • Chemical engineering
  • Nanotechnology
  PublisherDOI

• A slow-growing anterior maxillary mass

  Oral Surgery Oral Medicine Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology · 2021-01-28

  article
  PublisherDOI

• New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition

  Journal of American History · 2020-03-06

  article1st authorCorresponding

  As the editors make clear in their introduction to “the contours of black intellectual history,” this volume reflects a recent organizational initiative—the 2014 African American Intellectual History Society—with a three-century-long prehistory of black American and African diasporic communities mustering the “ideas and symbols that people use to make sense of the world” (p. 3). The mode of intellectual history valorized here “is not about what people did, necessarily, but more about what they thought about what they were doing” (ibid.). The book's twelve essays are arranged conceptually around four central themes: black internationalism, religion and spirituality, racial politics, struggles for racial justice, and black radicalism. Each section contains three essays and is introduced by a prominent scholarly specialist—Michael O. West, Judith Weisenfeld, Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, and Robin D. G. Kelley—whose comments expand the introductory editorial overview. As such, New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition has a pronounced reverberative symmetry that underscores the explicit revisionary objectives of confronting the deficiencies of prior historiographical efforts. Such efforts overlooked key contextual and perspectival evidence rooted in either underappreciated gender disparities or the internal dynamics of conflict and debate within black diasporic communities over the meanings of freedom and competing strategies for achieving it.

  PublisherDOI

• Amo, Anton Wilhelm (c.1703–56)

  2018-09-11

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The first European-trained African philosopher, Amo pursued a scholarly career in jurisprudence and then in rationalist psychology, logic, and metaphysics. He trained at Halle, Wittenberg and Jena universities, and was influenced by the systems of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian von Wolff. While at Halle university, he wrote a pioneering legal dissertation on the application of Roman laws of slavery to Africans in Europe. Subsequently drawn to classical, biblical, and hermetic traditions that apotheosized a cultural continuity with ancient Africa, Amo focused his theoretical and practical concerns on the exterior world of international law and the interior world of deliberative intellectual acts.

  PublisherDOI

• Religion and the modern mind: lectures delivered before the Glasgow university society of St. Ninian

  2018-05-17

  book1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Bradford Schools by Level of Deprivation (2010)

  2015-05-01

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• T. A. Torda

  UNSW Sydney

  22 shared

• Lisa Riste

  University of Manchester

  17 shared

• Kennedy Cruickshank

  Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

  17 shared

• J. B. Johnston

  17 shared

• Graham Dunn

  Manchester Academic Health Science Centre

  17 shared

• Simon Anderson

  Aberdeen Royal Infirmary

  17 shared

• Ray G. Gosling

  University of Manchester

  17 shared

• Charles W. Powers

  16 shared