Derik Smith is a volunteer instructor from the Wilmette Institute in partnership with NCCU. He is also a professor in the Department of Literature at Claremont McKenna College.
His work focuses on African American literary culture, with a particular interest in poetry. He also teaches and writes about representations of blackness in American filmic and musical culture. His 2018 monograph, "Robert Hayden In Verse: New Histories of African American Poetry and the Black Arts Era," recently won the College Language Association’s annual book award. His current scholarship focuses on the poetics of rap, and the rise of the genre during the final decades of the twentieth century, as well as the connection between critical race studies and the Bahá’í Faith.
Smith regularly teaches courses in American prisons and nurtures activist interests in prison studies and pedagogy. He and his family live in Southern California.