Africana: Aardvark-Catholic

Kwame Anthony Appiah was born in 1954 in London and raised in Ghana. After graduating with a degree in philosophy from Cambridge University, he taught at Yale, Duke, and Cornell universities. He is currently a professor of Philosophy and African American Studies at Harvard University. Appiah has written on such topics as language in Assertion and Conditional and For Truth in Semantics, and racial philosophy and identities in Color Conscious and In My Father's House. In addition to his scholarly publications, Appiah is the author of the popular Sir Patrick Scott Series of mysteries. In this series, which includes Avenging Angel and Another Death in Venice, Barrister Patrick Scott uses his intellectual skills to solve murders in a most British fashion.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was born on September 16, 1950, in Keyser, West Virginia. He received a degree in history from Yale University in 1973 and a Ph.D. from Clare College, which is part of the University of Cambridge in 1979. He is a leading scholar of African-American literature, history, and culture. He began working on the Black Periodical Literature Project, which uncovered lost literary works published in 1800s. He rediscovered what is believed to be the first novel published by an African-American in the United States. He republished the 1859 work by Harriet E. Wilson, entitled Our Nig, in 1983. He has written numerous books including Colored People: A Memoir, A Chronology of African-American History, The Future of the Race, Black Literature and Literary Theory, and The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. In 1991, he became the head of the African-American studies department at Harvard University. He is now the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at the university. He wrote and produced several documentaries including Wonders of the African World, America Beyond the Color Line, and African American Lives. He has also hosted PBS programs such as Wonders of the African World, Black in Latin America, and Finding Your Roots.