Barbara Foley

Barbara Foley has spent her career as an intellectual excavator, digging into the radical roots of American letters that many in the academy preferred to overlook. As a professor at Rutgers University-Newark, she built a formidable body of work that treats literature not as a realm of pure aesthetics but as a battleground for ideology and social change. Her scholarship relentlessly centers the traditions of U.S. literary radicalism and African American literature, arguing that a true understanding of figures like Ralph Ellison or the Harlem Renaissance requires a Marxist and anti-racist lens. Foley’s writing, spanning six books and scores of articles, is known for its polemical force and unwavering political commitment. She challenges the depoliticization of the humanities, making a compelling case that the study of culture is empty without an analysis of power, capital, and resistance.