AMHERST — Amherst College professor Jeffrey Ferguson, who was credited with designing the school’s black studies curriculum, died Sunday night after a yearslong battle with cancer.
“I feel fortunate to have been his friend, one of many who benefited in immeasurable ways from his bold thinking, his warmth, his kindness, his sense of humor, and what can only be called his grace,” Amherst College President Biddy Martin wrote in a statement. “As recently as this past Friday evening, I had the chance to speak with him, to hear his distinctive laugh, and to sense his determination to persist in his thinking, loving, and living.”
Ferguson, who was born in 1964, is survived by his wife, Agustina, and their twin boys.
A well-known scholar of black studies and American studies, Ferguson began teaching at Amherst in 1996. His work includes his biography of the journalist and Harlem Renaissance intellectual George Schuyler, “The Sage of Sugar Hill,” as well as the volume “The Harlem Renaissance: A Brief History with Documents.”
In a 2011 speech, Ferguson described his intellectual undertakings: “Every year of my conscious life, up until now, I have been endeavoring — both intellectually and emotionally — to disentangle the puzzle of our peculiar American tendency to return continually, and despite our best wishes, to what we most disavow: privilege based on heredity and human possibility circumscribed by descent.”
Across social media, those who had come to know Ferguson as a teacher at Amherst reacted to the sad news.
“My seminar with Professor Ferguson almost 20 years ago was one of my most memorable classroom experiences at Amherst,” Michael Becker, a 1999 Amherst graduate who is now at the University of Cambridge, wrote on Twitter. “He was a terrific teacher and scholar, and I learned so much from the ways that he challenged me (which he consistently did!)”
In addition to designing the black studies curriculum at Amherst, Ferguson was also part of early discussions on a curriculum committee at the college, which will present its recommendations this spring, according to Martin.
Ferguson had also been working on a study of the theme of resistance in African-American discourse, and on an anthology of American literature reflecting on the extent to which black and white literary traditions in the country are interrelated.
In her letter, Martin said friends and admirers of Ferguson’s are creating a teaching award in his name at Amherst, and are also planning a symposium in his honor.
“The courage, curiosity, and understanding with which he faced and discussed his illness amazed me, and it stimulated my interest in the medical advances he described and in the other approaches to health and healing that he had adopted long ago,” Martin wrote. “I was often buoyed by his evident love of life and the gratitude he felt for the life he had, for his family, his friends, and his work.”
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.