Joel Elias Spingarn
| Joel Elias Spingarn | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 17, 1875 New York, NY, United States |
| Died | July 26, 1939 (aged 64) New York, NY, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Columbia College |
| Occupation | educator, literary critic, civil rights activist |
| Organization | NAACP |
| Political party | Republican |
| Movement | African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954) |
| Spouse(s) | Amy Einstein Spingarn |
| Children | 2 sons (including Stephen, 2 daughters |
| Relatives | Arthur B. Spingarn (brother) |
Joel Elias Spingarn (May 17, 1875 – July 26, 1939) was an American educator, literary critic, and civil rights activist.
Spingarn was born in New York City to an upper middle-class Jewish family. His younger brother was Arthur B. Spingarn. He graduated from Columbia College in 1895. He grew committed to the importance of the study of comparative literature as a discipline distinct from the study of English or any other language-based literary studies.
Politics was one of his lifetime passions. In 1908, as a Republican he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1912 and 1916, he was a delegate to the national convention of the Progressive Party. At the first of those conventions, he failed in his attempts to add a statement condemning racial discrimination to the party platform.
He served as professor of comparative literature at Columbia University from 1899 to 1911. His academic publishing established him as one of America's foremost comparativists. It included two editions of A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance in 1899 and 1908 as well as edited works like Critical Essays of the Seventeenth-Century in 3 volumes. He summarized his philosophy in The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910. There he argued against the constraints of such traditional categories as genre, theme, and historical setting in favor of viewing each work of art afresh and on its own terms.
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