Eric Darnell Pritchard | University of Arkansas (original) (raw)

Eric Darnell Pritchard is an award-winning writer, fashion historian, cultural critic, and endowed Brown Chair in English Literacy at the University of Arkansas. They are also on the faculty of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. They are represented by Tanya McKinnon at McKinnon Literary.

Pritchard’s research and teaching focuses on the intersections of race, queerness, sexuality, gender and class with historical and contemporary literacy and rhetorical practices, as well as fashion, beauty, and popular culture.

Their first book, Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy (Southern Illinois University Press, December 2016), received three book awards from two professional organizations/conferences: the inaugural Outstanding Book Award from the Conference on Community Writing (CCW,) and the 2018 Advancement of Knowledge Award, as well as the 2018 Lavender Rhetorics Book Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), and was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2018 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award from the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric. Fashioning Lives examines the ways Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people repurpose literacy to survive and flourish in a constellation of life events including identity affirmation, community formation, self-care, and love. The book is based on original in-depth interviews with 60 Black LGBTQ people of various ages living across the United States, synthesizing analysis of the interviews with close readings of Black queer literature (novels, short stories, poems), film, popular music, visual arts, and extensive archival research.

Pritchard is also guest editor of "Sartorial Politics, Intersectionality, and Queer Worldmaking," a special issue of QED: A Journal of GLGBTQ Worldmaking (Vol. 4, Issue 3), published by Michigan State University Press in January 2018.

Currently, they are at work on the book “Abundant Black Joy: The Life and Work of Patrick Kelly,” which will be published by Amistad/HarperCollins in 2023. Abundant Black Joy is the biography of 1980s fashion design superstar, Patrick Kelly, the first American admitted into Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-porter (France's ready-to-wear association).

Pritchard's other writings have appeared in scholarly and popular venues including the journals Harvard Educational Review, Literacy in Composition Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Southern Communication Journal, with forthcoming work in The International Journal of Fashion Studies.; book chapters in the anthologies Sexual Rhetorics: Methods, Identities, Publics (Routledge, 2015) and Homegirls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology (Parker Publishing LLC, 2007); and short articles and op-eds in Public Books, Ebony.com, The Funambulist (Clothing Politics Issue), and Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

Pritchard’s article “For Colored Kids Who Committed Suicide, Our Outrage Isn’t Enough: Queer Youth of Color, Bullying, and the Discursive Limits of Identity and Safety” (Harvard Educational Review) was awarded in 2014 the inaugural “Lavender Rhetorics Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship” from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC).

They also received the Visiting Scholar Fellowship from the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University (2012-2013; 2013-2014 [declined]), a Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and National Endowment for the Humanities (2009-2010), the postdoctoral fellowship in African American Literature from Rutgers University [declined]), and research grants from the John L. Warfield Center for African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, the Esteem Award for National Service to the LGBTQ Community, and the A. Philip Randolph "Man of Vision" Award for Community Activism from the Wisconsin Black Student Union.
Address: Fayetteville, Arkansas

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