Johnson, who has concentrated her studies on Black women writers since 1980, says generational changes have a lot to do with the resurgence of literary studies within Afro-Am. "There are a lot of scholars who got interested in Black studies in the 1960s--many of them are now tenured someplace, and that has been formative in making a body of scholarship," she says.

"The scholars who are now in their 30s--like Gates--provide a kind of bridge," says Baker, who was a young professor at Yale when Gates was an undergraduate there. "They are the second generation, whose graduate education included exposure to the theoretical explosions of deconstructionism and post-structuralism."

Gates, an undergraduate at Yale from 1969 to 1973, says that he and many other scholars in the field were influenced by the historian Arthur Schomburg's reminder that "before we can progress, we have to understand our past." History was therefore the preoccupation of the first phase of Afro-American studies, he argues.

But, as evidenced by such works as his widely-celebrated The Signifying Monkey, Gates--and his fellow critics of Black literature--draw heavily on modern critical theory to interpret Black literature.

This new trend in Black studies should have a profound effect on the direction of Afro-Am at Harvard, which is beginning to build up after having lain dormant for nearly a decade.

A joint appointment with Harvard's English and Afro-Am Departments is in the works, according to professors. But Arnold Rampersad, the scholar at Columbia, may prove difficult to lure away.

Rampersad, whose recently published biography of Langston Hughes received national acclaim, is "a master scholar and is world class by any standards," according to Baker. But Baker cautions against placing Rampersad, who received his Ph.D at Harvard, in the same category with the literary theorists. "He doesn't really see the same urgency and incumbency to theorize," Baker says.

Several professors who asked not to be named say that Harvard has tried on and off for years to lure Gates, to Harvard as a tenured professor, but they say those recruiting efforts have never resulted in a formal offer. Gates, a Cornell professor who holds appointments in the Africana Studies, Comparative Literature and English departments there, has written several books in recent years that have greatly expanded the reach of Afro-American literary criticism, scholars say.

But whether or not Harvard succeeds in hiring Gates or Rampersad, Sollors, who himself focusues on Black literature, says the recent innovations in literary studies will have an impact on the future of the field at Harvard. "We have a very interesting recent mountain of good books upon which to build," he says.

Sollors says the agenda for Harvard's Afro-Am Department is straightforward for the next few years: to hire a musicologist to replace Eileen Southern, professor of music emeritus, to find social scientists and finally, to strengthen the study of history and literature.

That agenda, he says, "is fairly typical of Afro-American studies across the country." If Harvard can successfully recruit candidates to fill those posts, then the department will be in "excellent" shape over the next 10 years ago.

But whatever the fate of individual departments of Afro-American Studies, scholars say the dramatic recent shift in the field has given new life to Black Studies as an academic discipline. The question that remains is whether the soul of the field will be lost in the process.

"It has been a long struggle really--players have changed, standards have changed, conditions have changed. Today, Afro-American studies in literature have levels of prestige never before attained. We are in a mini-Golden Age," Rampersad says. "But we've got to remember the struggle--the Black academic community must understand what the field is all about."