William Henry Pruitt III

Assistant Professor of African American Studies Loyola Marymount University

  • Los Angeles CA

Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts

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Loyola Marymount University

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Biography

Dr. William Henry Pruitt III, Ph.D. is a scholar of twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. literature, culture, and politics. He researches the production of knowledge about the U.S. nation-state, especially its capitalist, liberal democracy. His current book project, tentatively entitled “Black U.S. Presidents During the Jim Crow Era: A History of Hypotheticals,” narrates, explicates, and assesses debates about the meaning and function of a Black U.S. Presidency. Spanning the infamous Compromise of 1877 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, this manuscript analyzes novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, comics, cartoons, films, songs, recorded interviews, and theatrical performances as well as the campaigns of Black Presidential candidates and Black Vice-Presidential candidates.

Education

Harvard University

Ph.D.

African and African American Studies

2022

Columbia University

M.A.

Comparative Literature

2014

Amherst College

B.A.

Black Studies and Political Science,

2007

Areas of Expertise

Twentieth and Twenty-First Century U.S. Literature
Black Radicalism
Black Intellectual History
Black Performance Studies
Black Queer Studies

Affiliations

  • Modern Language Association : Member, 2021 - Present
  • American Studies Association : Member, 2017 - Present
  • Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, 2023 - Present

Articles

"From The Furious Passage (1966) to Living in Fire (2019): A Review of Biographies about James Baldwin"

James Baldwin Review

William Pruitt

2023

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