Larson, Charles R.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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 .

From the guide to the Charles R. Larson Papers, 1894-2008 (bulk 1967-2002), (The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center)