Daniel Walden

Daniel Walden, BA, City College of New York (1959), MA,Columbia University (1961) , PhD New York University (1964), has written in several areas. His On Being Black: African American Literature from Douglass to the Present (1970), with Charles Davis, was a pioneering book. On Being Jewish: Jewish American Literature from Cahan to Bellow (1974) was a pioneering book in that field. He founded the journal Studies in American Jewish Literature in 1975 and served continuously as its editor from then into 2011. SAJL was published by Purdue University but as of 2012 will be publishd by Penn State University Press.

He has published more than 90 journal articles in peer reviewed journals. In 1984 Walden published "The World of Chaim Potok," a whole issue of SAJL. In 1985 Walden published Twentieth Century American Jewish Fiction Writers (Greenwood Press), DLB 28. Conversations with Chaim Potok came out in 2002 (UniversityPress of Mississippi).

Professor Walden, who has taught at PennState University since 1966, was Director of American Studies for ten years, first taught African American literature in 1968, first tauight Jewish American literature in 1972, innovated "Ethnicity and The American Experience" in 1972, and founded the Jewish Studies Program . Dr. Walden has taught  American Literature, Comparative Literature, African American literature  and Jewish AmericanLiterature courses. Though retired officially in 1998 he continues to teach one course per semester.