The Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University, Professor Basker studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where he completed his doctorate in English literature, and at Cambridge where he earned his MA. Among his many publications are Tobias Smollett (1988), Tradition in Transition (1996), Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems About Slavery (2002) and Early American Abolitionists (2005). Having felt that his own experiences in Europe were personally transformative, he was moved to replicate the experience for high school students when he founded a summer school at Oxford in 1985. Since then, Oxbridge Academic Programs has established programs for middle and high school students in Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Montpellier in the South of France, and Barcelona in Spain.

Prof. James G. Basker