Steven Tracy is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has authored, edited, co-edited, or provided introductions for thirty books, provided over seventy contributions to book publications edited by others, written over fifty CD liner notes, and taught, lectured, and presented papers in the US, Canada, England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Israel, and China. A singer-harmonica player, he has opened for B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Canned Heat, and others, and recorded with blues groups and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. His Writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2011. Touched by the Blues: Futuristic Jungleism, Ragmentation, and the Bluing of American Literature is at press under consideration. He is currently on the Fulbright Senior Specialist roster and will lecture and teach as a Fulbright Senior Specialist at the University of Konstanz in Germany, and has been chosen for the ChuTian Scholar Award, the most prestigious scholar award in Hubei Province, China.