William J. Maxwell's scholarly research, rooted in both modernist and African American studies, blends literary-critical and historical methods to address the ties among African American writing and the wider domains of modern poetics, political theory, and transatlantic culture.  He has published over thirty articles and reviews, and two books: the award-winning New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and Communism between the Wars (Columbia University Press) and an annotated edition of Claude McKay's Complete Poems (University of Illinois Press).  He is now at work on a book for the Princeton University Press entitled FB Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover?s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature. FB Eyes take its cue from the recent "return of the state" and examines how U.S. federal law enforcement surveyed and inspired African American literature, framing a cosmopolitan yet state-hunted, sometimes state-haunted, tradition of the new.  Using scores of Freedom of Information Act requests to paint the first extensive portrait of the bond between black letters and national intelligence gathering, the book argues that both the production and reception of Afro-modernist writing grappled with the long arm of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Maxwell, a winner of Mellon and Illinois University Scholar fellowships, serves as a contributing editor for American Literary History and as the book review editor of African American Review.