Harry J. Elam, Jr. is Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities, the Robert and Ruth Halperin University Fellow for Undergraduate Education, Professor of Drama, Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts and Director of the Committee on Black Performing Arts at Stanford University. He is author of: Taking it to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka (University of Michigan Press) and The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (University of Michigan Press); and co-editor of: African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader (Oxford University Press), of Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Drama (Penguin Press), of The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the New Millennium (Theatre Communications Group Press) and of Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Black Performance and Popular Culture (forthcoming University of Michigan Press).

His articles have appeared in American Drama ,Modern Drama ,Theatre Journal , and Text and Performance Quarterly , as well as several critical anthologies. He is the outgoing Vice-President of the American Society for Theatre Research, the current editor of Theatre Journal , and on the editorial board of Modern Drama ,Comparative Drama ,Atlantic Studies and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre. He has directed both professionally and at academic institutions for over eighteen years. Professionally, he has directed Fences by August Wilson, winner of 8 Bay Area "Choice" Awards, Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleague - nominated for nine Bay Area Critics' Circle Awards and the winner of DramaLogue Awards for Best Production, Best Design, Best Ensemble Cast and Best Direction - Two Trains Running by August Wilson, and Jar the Floor all for TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, California. He has also directed Tod, the Boy Tod by Tavin Wilks for the Oakland Ensemble Company. Professor Elam received his AB from Harvard College in 1978 and was the commencement speaker. Elam earned his Ph.D. in Dramatic Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1984.