R O B E R T. B. S T E P T O '66

The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in October, 1998.

SHEDDING LIGHT ON AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES THROUGH AN INTIMATE LENS

The legendary jazz musician Coleman Hawkins, a summer retreat for African-Americans near Lake Michigan, and an African-American regiment in World War I are all personal touchstones in the life of Robert B. Stepto '66. Stories about all three appear in his newly published memoir and map out an African-American landscape unique in American literature.  Engaging in their own right, the stories also place Stepto, a professor of African-American studies, American studies, and English at Yale University, squarely in the center of the disciplines he teaches.

"The book personalizes what I teach," Stepto explains." That was one of my intentions in writing it. I do, lately, use personal anecdotes to make a point. One feature of growing older is that you do have stories that are pertinent to what you teach, stories that can make the difference between an ordinary lecture and one that is gripping."

Stepto's recollections in Blue as the Lake: A Personal Geography are gripping. The life of a relative, the celebrated tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, is juxtaposed with the suicide of Hawkins' father, who looks at a mysterious piece of yellow paper, lights his pipe, and walks into the Missouri River.   Idlewild, a Michigan resort popular with midwesterners in the 1920s through the 1960s, is made memorable by a young Robert Stepto, who watches Mister Winfield, a "black Jay Gatsby," successfully elude police during their repeated visits to his home. Also recounted in the book's nine pieces is an intriguing meeting between Stepto's grandfather, a corporal in the 351st Field Artillery Regiment, and his wife.

The New York Times Book Review says "Stepto's recollections of his kin . . . meld beautifully with his generous evocations of time and place." Stepto's colleagues in African-American and American studies at Yale obviously concur with the assessment. They have used his essays in their classes and have invited Stepto to discuss them as a guest lecturer. The Trinity community will have the opportunity to hear Stepto read from his book during a booksigning at Gallows Hill bookstore on November 6 at 4:30 p.m.

Captivated by literature

Stepto's curiosity about place and life in general prompted him to leave his home in Chicago, pursue an interest in English at Trinity, and delve into the world of liberal arts. He still remembers taking a diverse variety of courses, including Greek civilization and Asian religion. But a course in European intellectual history taught by Instructor in History Thomas E. Willey, in which Stepto read novels such as Stendahl's The Red and the Black and works by Arthur Koestler, proved particularly memorable. "It was an intellectual high for me," he recalls. While at Trinity, Stepto applied his literary and creative abilities to the College's literary magazine, The Trinity Review, becoming art editor and ultimately editor-in-chief. He graduated cum laude with honors in English. 

Stepto's captivation with literature and his receipt of a prestigious Woodrow Wilson Fellowship propelled him toward graduate school at Stanford University, where he earned a master's degree in American literature in 1968 and Ph.D. in 1974. He returned East and joined the faculty of Williams College where he served as assistant professor of English and American Studies for three years before joining Yale in 1974 as an assistant professor. He was named a full professor in 1984. He has also taught at the Bread Loaf School of English, at Dartmouth, and at Princeton. 

An active alumnus of the College, he served as a member of the board of trustees from 1982 to 1992. G. Keith Funston Professor of American Literature and American Studies Jan K. Cohn, who served as dean of faculty when Stepto was a trustee, remembers him for his contribution in establishing the Ann Plato Fellowship. Named for a 19th-century African-American poet, essayist, and teacher, the Fellowship each year supports a minority doctoral student engaged in writing his or her dissertation. "Bob was instrumental in pushing the Fellowship through, in finding a name for it, and in helping us to find terrific faculty. The combination of having been a Trinity undergraduate and having achieved his position in the academic world gave him a special standing on the board." Trinity awarded him an Alumni Medal for Excellence in 1986.

Besides his most recent opus, Stepto has written From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative, edited four other books on American and African-American literature, and been widely published in literary journals, including Callaloo and the New England Review.

Writing, in some form, is sure to continue to figure prominently in Stepto's future. His wife, Michele, a scholar of American children's literature, worked with their son, Gabriel, 28, (who is completing a novel), to translate a book from Spanish that was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times in 1996. A second son, Rafael, 23, is a writer of short fiction. Is there a family collaboration planned for the future? "We already have collaborated in the sense that there is nothing we write that doesn't pass before our first readers, who are the family," Stepto replied.

-- Suzanne Zack