William Henry Pruitt III
Assistant Professor of African American Studies | Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA, UNITED STATES
Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
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 liberal democracy. His current book project, tentatively entitled “Black U.S. Presidents During the Jim Crow Era: A History of Hypotheticals,” narrates, explicates, and assess 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 (3)
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 (5)
Twentieth and Twenty-First Century U.S. Literature
Black Radicalism
Black Intellectual History
Black Performance Studies
Black Queer Studies
Affiliations (3)
- 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 (1)
"From The Furious Passage (1966) to Living in Fire (2019): A Review of Biographies about James Baldwin"
James Baldwin ReviewWilliam Pruitt
2023
