J. E. Spingarn

Joel Elias Spingarn was an American educator, literary critic, civil rights activist, military intelligence officer and horticulturalist. He taught at Columbia University, was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and later gave its Spingarn Medal. His chapter on scholarship and criticism appears in the 1922 collection Civilization in the United States. His own writing argued for criticism that treats a work of art on its own terms.