Alan M. Wald

Alan Maynard Wald (born June 1, 1946) is an American professor emeritus of English Literature and American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and writer of 20th-century American literature who focuses on Communist writers; he is an expert on the American 20th-Century "Literary Left."

Background Alan M. Wald was born in Washington, DC. His parents were Haskell Philip Wald, an economist with the Federal Government and Federal Reserve Bank, and Ruth Jacobs, a special education teacher. Some of the hitherto lesser known writers in whom he has expertise include: Ann Petry, Jo Sinclair, and Willard Motley.

Activist Wald has been a self-proclaimed political activist ("radical activist") since high school, when he read books by Richard Wright and James T. Farrell, as well as Dalton Trumbo's novel ‘’Johnny Got His Gun’’. In 1997, he joined the editorial board of Science & Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis (founded 1936). Throughout his nearly four-decade affiliation with the University of Michigan, his activism includes support for the: Washtenaw County Coalition Against Apartheid, Latin American Solidarity Committee, Palestine Human Rights Campaign, and United Coalition Against Racism.

On 16 March 1986, Wald was arrested for partaking in a "sit-in" at the office of Rep. Carl Pursell (R-Ann Arbor) to protest his support for President Ronald Reagan's plan to send $100 million to the counter-revolutionary Contras in Nicaragua. Wald was tried and convicted. As late as 1987, the ‘’New York Times’’ characterized Wald's political orientation as Trotskyist. His activism continues, demonstrated by his signature on a 2016 "anti-intolerance statement."

Personal Wald identifies himself as having a "secular Jewish identity." and Hannah are their two daughters.

In 2001, he began a relationship with former student Angela D. Dillard, then a professor of African-American History at New York University. They became engaged when she took a position at the University of Michigan in 2006. They married in 2007.

Awards and grants Awards and grants received by Wald include:

2012: American Studies Association's Mary C. Turpie Prize 2011–2012: National Endowment for the Humanities 2004: Longfellow House Resident Fellow 1989: Yale University Beinecke Fellow 1976: American Council of Learned Societies and Michael Löwy. Proceedings were published as Lineages of the Literary Left: Essays in Honor of Alan M. Wald by the University of Michigan's Maize Books.

In 2007, he was appointed Collegiate Professor by the Regents and named his chair in honor of Chandler Davis, mathematician – and one-time political prisoner, after being fired from the University of Michigan and followed by blacklisting). In 2011, he presented a lecture under the auspices of this position which was attended by the 85-year-old Davis. In 2022, he wrote Davis' obituary for Jacobin (magazine).

Students of Wald's include: Howard Brick, Louis Evans Professor of History, University of Michigan Robbie Lieberman, Professor of American Studies and Chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department, Kennesaw State University Paula Rabinowitz, Professor Emerita of English Literature and American Studies, University of Minnesota

Regarding his lifelong activism, Wald has stated, "I have always been a bit player in these events, never a leader." 2017 ) The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Selected Essays on Marxist Traditions in Cultural Commitment (Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press, 1992; paperback, 1995) Writing From the Left: New Essays on Radical Culture and Politics (London and New York: Verso, 1994) "Literary Left Trilogy": Exiles From a Future Time (2002) Trinity of Passion: The Literary Left and the Antifascist Crusade (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007) American Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012)

He has contributed chapters to books and many published essays.

Articles: "When Max Eastman Was Young" in Jacobin (2018)