Kenneth Harrow was Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English at Michigan State University (1966-2018). He received a B.S. from M.I.T in 1964, a Master’s in English from NYU, and a PhD in Comparative Literature also from NYU in 1970.

His work focused on African cinema and literature, Diaspora and Postcolonial Studies. He was the author of Thresholds of Change in African Literature (Heinemann, 1994); Less Than One and Double: A Feminist Reading of African Women’s Writing (Heinemann, 2002); Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (Indiana U P, 2007); Trash! A Study of African Cinema Viewed from Below (Indiana University Press, 2013); Space and Time in African Cinema and Cine-Scapes. Taylor and Frances (Series: Routledge Advances in Film Studies), 2022; African Cinema in a Global Age. Taylor and Frances (Series: Routledge Advances in Film Studies), 2023.

He edited numerous collections on such topics as Islam and African literature, African cinema, and women in African literature and cinema, including: with Frieda Ekotto the collection Rethinking African Cultural Production (Indiana University Press, 2015). Edited African Filmmaking: Five Formations (MSU Press, 2017), A Companion in African Cinema (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), coedited with Carmela Garritano.

He published more than 60 articles and twenty-five chapters.

His service to the profession included organizing numerous conferences dealing with African literature and cinema, including twice the African Literature Association’s annual conference—once on the theme of theory in the field of African literary studies in 1986, and a second in 1997 on African cinema.

He served as President of the African Literature Association, and was honored with their first Distinguished Member Award in 2009. In 2010 he was honored with the Distinguished Faculty Award at Michigan State University, and in 2011 was honored with the Distinguished Africanist Award at the Toyin Falola Annual Conference, University of Texas. In 2023 he was awarded the Distinguished Africanist Award, African Studies Association.

Grants include an NEH Younger Humanist Award recipient in 1973-4, which brought him to France, Algeria, and Morocco. His Fulbright teaching and research awards brought him to Cameroon in 1977-79, and Senegal from 1982-3 and 2005-6.

He served on the board for the African Literature Association, the African Studies Association.

He was general editor for the series “African Humanities and the Arts” for Michigan State University Press until 2024.

His most recent work focused on time and space in African cinema, and African cinema’s relationship to the contested concept of World Cinema.