Gayle Pemberton

Gayle Pemberton (born June 29, 1948) is an American essayist. She won the 1993 New Jersey Humanities Book Award for her essay series The Hottest Water in Chicago. She also worked as a professor at Northwestern University, Bowdoin College, Princeton University, and Wesleyan University (where she was a William R. Kenan Jr. Professor), and she was a 1993 Guggenheim Fellow. Biography Gayle Pemberton was born June 29, 1948, in St. Paul, Minnesota, to a family "with educated, middle-class leanings but not middle-class money". She attended Central High School in Kansas City, Missouri, graduating in 1965, and Bradford Girls' Grammar School, where she was an American Field Service exchange student.

Pemberton briefly attended Lake Forest College, before going to the University of Michigan, where she got a BA in English in 1969, and Harvard University, where she got her MA in English in 1971 and PhD in American literature and Language in 1981; As part of her doctoral studies, she was a 1974-1975 Ford Foundation fellow and 1975-1976 W. E. B. Du Bois Foundation Fellow.

After working as a lecturer at Columbia University (1974-1977) and as an instructor in Middlebury College (1977-1980), Pemberton became an assistant professor of English at Northwestern University, serving until 1983. She was a contributor to Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power. she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to research Black women in American film.

In 1994, Pemberton became a full professor of English at Wesleyan and was appointed William R. Kenan Jr. Professor, eventually becoming professor emeritus.