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Charles Raymond Larson was born to Ray Olaf and Miriam Kamphoefner Larson on January
14, 1938, in Sioux City, Iowa. Larson graduated from the University of Colorado
with
a B.A. in English Literature in 1959 and an M.A., also in English Literature,
in
1961. He received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University in
1970. |
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Larson taught at high schools in Burlington, Iowa (1959-1960) and Englewood,
Colorado (1961-1962) and was a part time instructor in the English Department
of the
University of Colorado (1961-1962) before joining the Peace Corps in 1962. Larson
was sent to southeastern Nigeria, where he taught English at Oraukwu Grammar School
for two years. While in Nigeria, he developed a strong personal interest in African
literature. At the time, courses in African literature were not available in the
United States. |
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Upon returning to the United States, Larson taught at the University of Colorado
(1965) and American University in Washington, D.C. (1965-1967) and was a lecturer
at
Indiana University (1967-1970) while earning his Ph.D. His course in African
Literature at the University of Colorado was the first one taught in the United
States. When Larson became an associate professor in the Department of Literature
at
American University in 1970, he began a long career there, becoming a full professor
in 1974 and chair of the department in 2002. He continued to develop and teach
new
courses in the area of African literature. |
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Larson served as general editor of Collier’s African/American Library from
1968-1972, producing thirty-eight volumes of works by African, African American,
and
West Indian writers. He became a fiction and book review editor at Worldview in 1996. As a promoter of African literature,
Larson has edited short story anthologies, including African
Short Stories: A Collection of Contemporary African Writing (1970,
published as Modern African Stories in 1971), Opaque Shadows and Other Stories from Contemporary
Africa (1975, reprinted as More Modern African
Stories), and Under African Skies: Modern African
Stories (1997). Larson’s book The Emergence of
African Fiction (1972) examined the works of African novelists, while
The Ordeal of the African Writer (2001) addressed
publishing challenges and other issues facing African writers. Larson has published
numerous essays, reviews and articles about African literature. |
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Larson has also edited, written, and taught about works by Native American, African
American, and Third World authors. American Indian
Fiction (1978) offers literary criticism of novels by Native American
writers. Larson’s extensive research on Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen resulted
in the
publication of Invisible Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella
Larsen (1993). He also edited An Intimation of
Things Distant: The Collected Fiction of Nella Larsen (1992) and The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen (2001). Other works
by Larson include Prejudice: Twenty Tales of Oppression and
Liberation (1971), The Novel in the Third
World (1976), and Worlds of Fiction (1993). |
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In addition to the numerous articles, reviews, essays, poetry, and stories he has
had published in various periodicals and newspapers, Larson has written several
novels. Of these, Academia Nuts was published in
1977, The Insect Colony in 1978, and Arthur Dimmesdale in 1983. |
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Larson married Roberta Rubenstein on May 2, 1971, and they have two children,
Vanessa and Joshua. Rubenstein is also a professor of literature at American
University, teaching courses on modernism, modernist and contemporary women writers,
and feminist literary theory. She has assisted Larson with his work and was coeditor
of the anthology Worlds of Fiction. |
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