Joshua Bennett

Joshua Bennett is a Professor of Literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT. He is the author of five books: Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023), which was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2023; The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022), which won the Paterson Poetry Prize, and is currently being adapted for television in collaboration with Warner Brothers Studios; Owed (Penguin, 2020), a finalist for the New England Book Award; Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), winner of the MLA’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize, and The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016), winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. For his creative writing and scholarship, Joshua has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He lives in Massachusetts with his family.