Harper's fields of study include modern and contemporary U.S. literary and cultural studies; African American literary, cultural, and fine art studies; aesthetics and social theory; and gender and sexuality studies. His 1997 book, Private Affairs: Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations, he explores the social and cultural significance of the private, proposing that privacy is limited by one's racial-and sexual-minority status. Art criticDouglas Crimp wrote," Private Affairs teaches us how thoroughly complex is the negotiation of privacy and publicity when we attend to gender and sexuality, race and class." In 2015, Harper published Abstractionist Aesthetics: Artistic Form and Social Critique in African American Culture, a series of essays arguing for displacing realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics. Rather, Harper argues, cultural producers should re-center literature as a principal site of African American cultural politics and elevate experimental prose within the domain of African American literature. The book explored the artistic practices of visual artistsFred Wilson and Kara Walker, the music of Billie Holiday and Cecil Taylor, and the writings of Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and John Keen. Professor Brent Hayes Edwards of Columbia University wrote, Harper was previously Director of Graduate Studies of American Studies, English, and SCA; Director of the American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Programs; and Chair of the Department of English. He is a Founding Chair of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, along with scholars Jose Esteban-Muñoz, Lisa Duggan, Carolyn Dinshaw, Ann Pellegrini, and Jack Tchen.
Books
Abstractionist Aesthetics: Artistic Form and Social Critique in African American Culture. New York: NYU Press, 2015
Private Affairs: Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations. New York: NYU Press, 1999
Queer Transexions of Race, Nation, and Gender. Durham: Duke Press, 1997
Are We Not Men? Masculine Anxiety and the Problem of African-American Identity. New York: Oxford UP, 1996
Framing the Margins: The Social Logic of Postmodern Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 1994
