ERIC DARNELL PRITCHARD

Eric Darnell Pritchard is the endowed Brown Chair in English Literacy and Associate Professor of English at the University of Arkansas and part of the faculty of the historic and prestigious Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.

Their first book, Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), received the inaugural 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the Conference on Community Writing, and the 2018 Advancement of Knowledge Award and the 2018 Lavender Rhetorics Book Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship, both from the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Fashioning Lives was also recognized as honorable mention for the 2018 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award from the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric.

They are an editor of “Sartorial Politics, Intersectionality, and Queer Worldmaking,” a special issue of QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (Michigan State University Press, 2017). And their writings have been published in  the International Journal of Fashion Studies, Harvard Educational Review, Literacy in Composition Studies, Public Books, Ebony.com, and The Funambulist: Clothing Politics Issues 1 and Issue 2.

Their research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University, among other institutions. They have received the 2018 Esteem Award for National Service to the LGBTQ Community presented at the 11th Annual Esteem Awards in Chicago, Illinois.

They are currently at work on the book Abundant Black Joy: The Life and Work of Patrick Kelly (forthcoming, Amistad/HarperCollins, 2024)