Joshua Bennett

{{Short description|American author and professor}} {{Infobox academic | name = Joshua Bennett | image = Joshua_Bennett.jpg | caption = | birth_date = | birth_place = Yonkers, New York, U.S.<ref name=abpf /> | occupation = Author, professor, and artist | title = | awards = Guggenheim Fellowship Whiting Award, Poetry and Nonfiction NEA Literature Fellowship National Poetry Series Marshall Scholarship | website = {{URL|https://www.drjoshuabennett.com/}} | education = BA in English and Africana Studies (2010) MA in Theatre and Performance Studies (2011) MA in English (2013) PhD in English (2016) | alma_mater = University of Pennsylvania University of Warwick Princeton University | thesis_title = | thesis_url = | thesis_year = | workplaces = Harvard University Dartmouth College Massachusetts Institute of Technology }} '''Joshua Bennett''' is an American author, professor, and artist. He is a Professor of Literature and Distinguished Chair of Humanities at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<ref name=LITMIT /> His research and teaching interests include 20th and 21st century African American literature, animality studies, affect theory, black poetics, and environmental studies.<ref name=LITMIT />

Bennett is a Guggenheim Fellow<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/joshua-bennett/|title=Joshua Bennett|website=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation...}}</ref> and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.arts.gov/impact/literary-arts/creative-writing-fellows/joshua-bennett|title=Joshua Bennett|website=www.arts.gov}}</ref> MIT,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://lit.mit.edu/joshua-bennett-won-national-poetry-series-prize-for-the-sobbing-school/|title=Joshua Bennett Won National Poetry Series Prize for "The Sobbing School" | LIT@MIT}}</ref> the Ford Foundation, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He received the Whiting Award in 2021.<ref name="whitingfoundation" /><ref name=“whitingdartmouth”>{{Cite web |title=Joshua Bennett Wins the Whiting Award |url=https://aaas.dartmouth.edu/news/2021/04/joshua-bennett-wins-whiting-award |website=Dartmouth College }} Retrieved 2026-05-11.</ref>

==Education== Bennett earned a Bachelor of Arts in both English and Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. Bennett then completed an M.A. in Theatre Performance Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK, where he was a Marshall Scholar in 2011. From Princeton University, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English, in 2013 and 2016, respectively.<ref>{{cite web |title=Joshua B Bennett |url=https://www.ias.edu/scholars/joshua-b-bennett|website=Institute for Advanced Study}} Retrieved 22 April 2026.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://poets.org/poet/joshua-bennett|title=Joshua Bennett|first=Academy of American|last=Poets|website=Poets.org}}</ref><ref name="abpf">{{cite web |title=The Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation: Joshua Bennett |url=https://www.brinkerhoffpoetry.org/poets/joshua-bennett |website=brinkerhoffpoetry.org}} Retrieved 22 April 2026.</ref>

==Career== From 2016 to 2019, Bennett was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://sps.columbia.edu/speaker/joshua-bennett-phd|title=Joshua Bennett, Ph.D. | Columbia University School of Professional Studies|website=sps.columbia.edu}}</ref> After his time at Harvard, he joined the faculty of Dartmouth College as the Mellon Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing.<ref name=oow>{{Cite web|url=https://english.dartmouth.edu/news/2019/01/department-english-creative-writing-welcomes-prof-joshua-bennett |title=Joshua Brandon Bennett|date=November 28, 2018|website=Department of English and Creative Writing}}</ref> From 2021 to 2023, he was a full professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2018/05/english-department-hires-critically-acclaimed-poet-joshua-bennett|title=English department hires critically-acclaimed poet Joshua Bennett|website=The Dartmouth}}</ref> In 2023, he joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Professor of Literature and Distinguished Chair of Humanities.<ref name="LITMIT">{{Cite web|url=https://lit.mit.edu/joshua-bennett/|title=Joshua Bennett | LIT@MIT}}</ref>

==Personal life==

Bennett has been a visiting writer at Kent State University, Lenoir-Rhyne University and the University of Pittsburgh. He has been a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,<ref name=LITMIT /> a visiting lecturer at Chautauqua Institution and a visiting scholar at Friends Seminary in New York City.

Bennett lives in Massachusetts with his family.<ref name=LITMIT />

==Works== Bennett has recited his original work as a performance artist at events such as the Sundance Film Festival, the NAACP Image Awards,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://poetrysociety.org/poems-essays/stopping-by/stopping-by-with-joshua-bennett|title=Stopping by with Joshua Bennett|website=Poetry Society of America}}</ref> and President Obama's Evening of Poetry and Music at The White House. His work has been published extensively, notably in ''The Best American Poetry'', ''The New York Times'',<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/african-american-poets.html?mtrref=www.google.com&assetType=REGIWALL&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&assetType=PAYWALL&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&assetType=PAYWALL&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&assetType=PAYWALL&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&gwh=94F9B91D9231024D5CC2628151442CF6&gwt=pay&assetType=PAYWALL|title=African American poets|website=The New York Times |date=14 August 2019 |last1=Ward |first1=Jesmyn |last2=Jenkins |first2=Barry |last3=Dove |first3=Rita }}</ref> ''The Paris Review'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/04/14/2021-whiting-awards-joshua-bennett-poetry-and-nonfiction/|title=Joshua Bennett, Poetry and Nonfiction|first=Joshua|last=Bennett|date=April 14, 2021}}</ref> ''Boston Review'',<ref>{{Cite magazine|url=https://bostonreview.net/articles/joshua-bennett-frederick-douglass-dead/|title=Frederick Douglass Is Dead - Boston Review|work=Boston Review |date=16 August 2017 |last1=Bennett |first1=Joshua }}</ref> ''The Yale Review'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://yalereview.org/author/joshua-bennett|title=Joshua Bennett|website=The Yale Review}}</ref> and elsewhere. He was featured in the HBO documentary, Brave New Voices. Together with Jesse McCarthy, he is the founding editor of a ''Penguin Classics book series'' for minor poets in the black expressive tradition, Minor Notes.

Christopher Kempf at Colorado State University described Bennett's poetry as being able to capture the many different facets of an African-American life, "a diverse body of experiences cut through with conflicting class and cultural investments." Kempf further detailed how Bennett reveals the "plasticity and performativity of identity."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/reviews/five-reviews-the-sobbing-school-not-on-the-last-day-but-on-the-very-last-the-wug-test-scriptorium-and-trebuchet/|title=Five Reviews: The Sobbing School; Not on the Last Day, but on the Very Last; The Wug Test; Scriptorium; and Trébuchet}}</ref> In ''Dissent Magazine'', Jesse McCarthy suggested that Bennett's voice is a portion of a literary movement where politics and poetry are coming together in an unanticipated way.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/protest-contemporary-black-poetry-claudia-rankine/|title=The Protest Poets}}</ref> In another article, McCarthy mentions how Bennett is "quietly building a reputation as one of the brightest intellectual and political thinkers of a new generation."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/on-blueness-a-conversation-with-joshua-bennett-sobbing-school/|title=On Blueness: A Conversation with Joshua Bennett}}</ref>

A poem of Bennett's, "Benediction," was chosen by Tracy K. Smith to be included in ''The Best American Poetry anthology'' in 2021.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://english.dartmouth.edu/news/2021/02/professor-bennetts-poem-selected-best-american-poetry-2021|title=Professor Bennett's Poem Selected for Best American Poetry 2021|date=February 3, 2021|website=Department of English and Creative Writing}}</ref> On the Academy of American Poets website, Bennett describes his "Dad Poem (Ultrasound #2)", as living in between the indescribable anxiety of becoming a parent during a global pandemic and the joy of being able to see his son's heartbeat in ultrasound for the first time. Despite the distance, he felt the closeness between them, like they were together somewhere else "vibrant, and alive."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://newsletterest.com/message/26934/Dad-Poem-Ultrasound-2-by-Joshua-Bennett|title="Dad Poem (Ultrasound #2)" by Joshua Bennett - Newsletterest|website=newsletterest.com}}</ref> Bennett has also authored two books of poetry, namely ''The Sobbing School'', which won the National Poetry Series and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, and ''Owed''. He has written a book of literary criticism, ''Being Property Once Myself'', which won the Williams Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association.

''The Sobbing School'' was described as a "scintillating debut" by ''Publishers Weekly''. Their review describes how Bennett put forward important questions related to the experiences of African-Americans, asking "how can one convey the enormity of black suffering without reducing black life and expression to elegy?" They further praise the collection as "sharp" and "an ode to family, friendship and culture that neither pulls punches nor withholds sentiment."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-14-311186-3|title=The Sobbing School}}</ref> The New Yorker's review of Owed details how "Themes of praise and debt pervade this rhapsodic, rigorous poetry collection, which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S. . . . Bennett conjures a spirit of kinship that, illuminated by redolent imagery, borders on mythic, and boldly stakes claim to ‘some living, future / English, & everyone in it / is immortal."<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/28/the-erratics-deep-delta-justice-a-country-for-dying-and-owed|title=Briefly Noted|magazine=The New Yorker }}</ref> Salon writes that "Bennett captures the beauty of what really matters in life—the memories, youth sports, family traditions and little moments that many of us take for granted" in addition to saying that the book couldn't have come out at a better time.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.salon.com/2020/09/12/joshua-bennett-owed-poetry-black-writing/|title="People are actively, persistently racist": Poet Joshua Bennett on performative anti-racism|date=September 12, 2020|website=Salon}}</ref> Ron Charles at ''Washington Post'' describes Bennett's literary criticism as "An intense and illuminating reevaluation of black literature and Western thought."<ref name="BelknapPressBennett">{{Cite web|url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674271166&content=reviews|title=Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man|first=Joshua|last=Bennett|date=February 8, 2022|publisher=Belknap Press|via=Harvard University Press Books}}</ref>

==Awards and honors== *2013 - Associate Fellowship, Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics *2015 - National Poetry Series Selection *2015 - Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship *2015 - Josephine de Karman Fellowship *2016 - Society of Fellows, Harvard University *2017 - National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship *2021 - William Sanders Scarborough Prize, MLA *2021 - Guggenheim Fellowship in American Literature *2021 - Whiting Award for Poetry and Nonfiction<ref name="whitingfoundation">{{Cite web |url=https://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/joshua-bennett#/ |title=Joshua Bennett |website=Whiting Foundation}}</ref><ref name=“whitingdartmouth” /> *2023 - Paterson Poetry Prize *2025 - Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow, Princeton University

==Bibliography== ===Books=== * {{cite book |title=The Sobbing School |publisher=Penguin Books/Penguin Poets |year=2016 |isbn=9781101993101}}<ref>{{cite web |title=The Sobbing School |url=https://penguinrandomhousehighereducation.com/book/?isbn=9780143111863 |website=Penguin Random House Higher Education}} Retrieved 19 April 2026.</ref> * {{cite book |title=Being Property Once Myself |publisher=Belknap Press/Harvard University Press |year=2020 |isbn=9780674980303}}<ref name=BelknapPressBennett /> * {{cite book |title=Owed |publisher=Penguin Books/Penguin Poets |year=2020 |isbn=9780143133858}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Owed |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/598376/owed-by-joshua-bennett/ |website=PenguinRandomHouse.com}} Retrieved 19 April 2026.</ref> * {{cite book |title=The Study of Human Life |publisher=Penguin Books/Penguin Poets |year=2022 |isbn=9780143136828}}<ref>{{cite web |title=The Study of Human Life |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/676210/the-study-of-human-life-by-joshua-bennett/ |website=PenguinRandomHouse.com}} Retrieved 19 April 2026.</ref> * {{cite book |title=Spoken Word: A Cultural History |publisher=Knopf |year=2023 |isbn=9781984897862}}<ref>{{cite web |title=How a new sound hit center stage: Joshua Bennett’s latest book... |url=https://news.mit.edu/2023/joshua-bennett-book-spoken-word-movement-0425 |website=MIT News}} Retrieved 19 April 2026.</ref> * {{cite book |title=We (the People of the United States) |publisher=Penguin Books/Penguin Poets |year=2026 |isbn=9780143138648}}<ref>{{cite web |title=We (the People of the United States) |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/769171/we-the-people-of-the-united-states-by-joshua-bennett/ |website=Penguin Random House }} Retrieved 19 April 2026.</ref>

===Selected poems=== *"On Blueness" and "Love Poem Ending with Typewriters" in ''Beloit Poetry Journal'' (2015)<ref>{{cite web |title=Beloit Poetry Journal Vol. 66 No. 1 |url=https://www.bpj.org/issues/v66n1 |website=bpj.org }} Retrieved 22 April 2026.</ref> *"Ode to Ankle Weights" and "Token Sings The Blues" in The Journal (2016) *"X" and "Praise Song for the Table In The Cafeteria Where All The Black Boys Sat Together During A Block, Laughing Too Loudly" in ''The Kenyon Review'' (2017) *"The Book of Mycah" in Poetry (2018)<ref>{{cite web |title=Joshua Bennett Reads "The Book of Mycah" |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/audio/145519/joshua-bennett-reads-the-book-of-mycah |website=poetfoundation.org}} Retrieved 23 April 2026.</ref> *"Barber Song" and "Owed to the Plastic on your Grandmother’s Couch" in ''Tin House'' (2018)<ref>{{cite web |title=Teach This Poem "Owed to the Plastic on Your Grandmother's Couch" |url=https://poets.org/poem/owed-plastic-your-grandmothers-couch |website=poets.org}} Retrieved 23 April 2026.</ref> *"America Will Be" in ''The Nation'' (2018)<ref>{{cite web |title=America Will Be |url=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/america-will-be/ |website=The Nation}} Retrieved 22 April 2026.</ref> *"Owed to Your Father’s Gold Chain" and "Trash" in ''The Kenyon Review'' (2019)<ref>{{cite web |title=Vol. 41, No. 4, July/Aug 2019 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/e26740304 |website=jstor.org}} Retrieved 23 April 2026.</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=“Trash” by Joshua Bennett |url=https://kenyonreview.org/piece/july-2019-trash/ |website=poetfoundation.org}} Retrieved 23 April 2026.</ref> *"Summer Job" in ''Wildness'' (2019) *"Reparation" in Provincetown Arts (2020) *"Dad Poem," "Trash" and "The Hurricane Doesn’t Roar in Pentameter" in ''Colorado Review'' (2021) *"Dad Poem" and "Dad Poem (The New Temporality)" in ''The Yale Review'' (2021)

==References == {{reflist}}

==External links== {{commons category}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bennett, Joshua}} Category:Living people Category:Dartmouth College faculty Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American male poets Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Alumni of the University of Warwick Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:Year of birth missing (living people)