Robert Reid-Pharr

Last updated
Robert Reid-Pharr
Robertreidpharr.png
Reid-Pharr in 2007
Alma mater University of North Carolina
Occupations
  • Critic
  • professor

Robert Reid-Pharr is an American literary and cultural critic and professor.

Contents

Early life and education

A native North Carolinian, Reid-Pharr holds a B.A. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and both an M.A. in African American studies and a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale University. [1]

Career

In 2016, he was named a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and visiting professor of gender and sexuality at Harvard University. [2] [3] In 2018, Reid-Pharr became Harvard's first professor of studies of women, gender, and sexuality. [4] His essays have appeared in Callaloo , Social Text , African American Review , American Literary History , AfterImage , Radical America , and American Literature . [1] He has been a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. [3] [5] In 2015, he was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. [6]

Reid-Pharr has taught at the Graduate Center, CUNY, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, the University of Oregon, the University of Oxford, the American University of Beirut, Swarthmore College, and the College of William and Mary. [3] His collection of essays Black, Gay, Man: Essays won the 2002 Randy Shilts Award for Best Gay Non-fiction given by the Publishing Triangle. [7] His book Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. [8] He is also the author of Conjugal Union:The Body, the House, and the Black American (Oxford University Press, 1999); and Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain, and Post-Humanist Critique (NYU 2016) for which he received an honorable mention for the 2017 William Sanders Scarborough Prize of the Modern Language Association. [9]

He is considered a "queer public intellectual" who "attempts to write noncompliance with heteronormativity, and affirmation of other ways of being, into existence" [10]

Selected bibliography

Related Research Articles

Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of queer studies and women's studies. The term "queer theory" can have various meanings depending upon its usage, but has been broadly associated with the study and theorization of gender and sexual practices that exist outside of heterosexuality, and which challenge the notion that heterosexual desire is "normal". Following social constructivist developments in sociology, queer theorists are often critical of what they consider essentialist views of sexuality and gender. Instead, they study those concepts as social and cultural phenomena, often through an analysis of the categories, binaries, and language in which they are said to be portrayed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">F. O. Matthiessen</span> American academic

Francis Otto Matthiessen was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies. His best known work, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman, celebrated the achievements of several 19th-century American authors and had a profound impact on a generation of scholars. It also established American Renaissance as the common term to refer to American literature of the mid-nineteenth century. Matthiessen was known for his support of liberal causes and progressive politics. His contributions to the Harvard University community have been memorialized in several ways, including an endowed visiting professorship.

Hazel Vivian Carby is Professor Emerita of African American Studies and of American Studies. She served as Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Gilroy</span> British historian (born 1956)

Paul Gilroy is an English sociologist and cultural studies scholar who is the founding Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Race and Racism at University College London (UCL). Gilroy is the 2019 winner of the €660,000 Holberg Prize, for "his outstanding contributions to a number of academic fields, including cultural studies, critical race studies, sociology, history, anthropology and African-American studies".

Ed Guerrero is an American film historian and associate professor of cinema studies and Africana studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. His writings explore black cinema, culture, and critical discourse. He has written extensively on black cinema, its movies, politics and culture for anthologies and journals such as Sight & Sound, FilmQuarterly, Cineaste, Journal of Popular Film & Television, and Discourse. Guerrero has served on editorial and professional boards including The Library of Congress' National Film Preservation Board.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gilbert Herdt</span> American anthropologist (born 1949)

Gilbert H. Herdt is Emeritus Professor of Human Sexuality Studies and Anthropology and a Founder of the Department of Sexuality Studies and National Sexuality Resource Center at San Francisco State University. He founded the Summer Institute on Sexuality and Society at the University of Amsterdam (1996). He founded the PhD Program in Human Sexuality at the California Institute for Integral Studies, San Francisco (2013). He conducted long term field work among the Sambia people of Papua New Guinea, and has written widely on the nature and variation in human sexual expression in Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, and across culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David M. Halperin</span> American academic

David M. Halperin is an American theorist in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, critical theory, material culture and visual culture. He is the cofounder of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and author of several books including Before Pastoral (1983) and One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (1990).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Roberts</span> American sociologist, law professor, and social justice advocate

Dorothy E. Roberts is an American sociologist, law professor, and social justice advocate. She is the Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, George A. Weiss University Professor, and inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. She writes and lectures on gender, race, and class in legal issues. Her focuses include reproductive health, child welfare, and bioethics. In 2023, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. She has published over 80 articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Warner</span> American literary critic, social theorist

Michael David Warner is an American literary critic, social theorist, and Seymour H. Knox Professor of English Literature and American Studies at Yale University. He also writes for Artforum, The Nation, The Advocate, and The Village Voice. He is the author of Publics and Counterpublics, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life, The English Literatures of America, 1500–1800, Fear of a Queer Planet, and The Letters of the Republic. He edited The Portable Walt Whitman and American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Susan J. Pharr is an academic in the field of political science, a Japanologist, and Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, director of Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University. Her current research focuses on the changing nature of relations between citizens and states in Asia, and on the forces that shape civil society over time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel R. Delany</span> American author, critic, and academic (born 1942)

Samuel R. "Chip" Delany is an American writer and literary critic. His work includes fiction, memoir, criticism, and essays on science fiction, literature, sexuality, and society. His fiction includes Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection ; Hogg, Nova, Dhalgren, the Return to Nevèrÿon series, and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. His nonfiction includes Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, About Writing, and eight books of essays. He has won four Nebula awards and two Hugo Awards, and he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sikivu Hutchinson</span> African-American feminist, author, and atheist activist

Sikivu Hutchinson is an American author, playwright, director, and musician. Her multi-genre work explores feminism, gender justice, racial justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, humanism and atheism. She is the author of Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical (2020), White Nights, Black Paradise (2015), Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels (2013), Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (2011), and Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (2003). Her plays include "White Nights, Black Paradise", "Rock 'n' Roll Heretic" and "Narcolepsy, Inc.". "Rock 'n' Roll Heretic" was among the 2023 Lambda Literary award LGBTQ Drama finalists. Moral Combat is the first book on atheism to be published by an African-American woman. In 2013 she was named Secular Woman of the year and was awarded Foundation Beyond Belief's 2015 Humanist Innovator award. She was also a recipient of Harvard's 2020 Humanist of the Year award.

Roderick Ferguson is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale University. He was previously professor of African American and Gender and Women's Studies in the African American Studies Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His scholarship includes work on African-American literature, queer theory and queer studies, classical and contemporary social theory, African-American intellectual history, sociology of race and ethnic relations, and black cultural theory. Among his contributions to queer theory, Ferguson is credited with coining the term Queer of Color Critique, which he defines as "...interrogat[ion] of social formations as the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class, with particular interest in how those formations correspond with and diverge from nationalist ideals and practices. Queer of color analysis is a heterogeneous enterprise made up of women of color feminism, materialist analysis, poststructuralist theory, and queer critique." Ferguson is also known for his critique of the modern university and the corporatization of higher education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeanne Theoharis</span> American political scientist

Jeanne Theoharis is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College.

Juan Jose Battle is an academic, author, activist, and feminist. He is currently Presidential Professor of sociology, public health, and urban education at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He also serves as the Coordinator of the Africana Studies Certificate Program. Battle's research focuses on race, sexuality, and social justice. He was a former president of The Association of Black Sociologists (ABS) and an active member of the American Sociological Association (ASA). He has delivered keynote lectures at a multitude of academic institutions, community based organizations, and funding agencies throughout the world and his scholarship has included work on five continents including North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe.

C. Riley Snorton is an American scholar, author, and activist whose work focuses on historical perspectives of gender and race, specifically Black transgender identities. His publications include Nobody is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low and Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. Snorton is currently Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. In 2014 BET listed him as one of their "18 Transgender People You Should Know".

Phillip Brian Harper is a literary scholar and cultural critic. He currently serves as Program Director for Higher Learning at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and was previously Dean for the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University. Harper is best known for his work in modern and contemporary literature, African American literature and culture, and gender and sexuality studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kyra Gaunt</span> American ethnomusicologist, activist and academic

Kyra Danielle Gaunt is an African American ethnomusicologist, Black girlhood studies advocate, social media researcher, feminist performance artist, and professor at the University at Albany in New York State. Gaunt's research focuses on the hidden musicianship of black girls' musical play at the intersections of race, racism, gender, heterosexism, misogynoir, age, and the kinetic-orality of the female body in the age of hip-hop. Her current research focuses on "the unintended consequences of gender, race, and technology from YouTube to Wikipedia."

Martha S. Jones is an American historian and legal scholar. She is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. She studies the legal and cultural history of the United States, with a particular focus on how Black Americans have shaped the history of American democracy. She has published books on the voting rights of African American women, the debates about women's rights among Black Americans in the early United States, and the development of birthright citizenship in the United States as promoted by African Americans in Baltimore before the Civil War.

Amber Jamilla Musser is an English professor at the CUNY Graduate Center. Musser is also Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

References

  1. 1 2 "Robert Reid-Pharr". Harvard University: Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality faculty profile. Retrieved 22 August 2018.
  2. "Robert Reid-Pharr Named 2016 Matthiessen Professor". Harvard Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Harvard University. Archived from the original on 1 February 2016. Retrieved 29 January 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 "Robert F. Reid-Pharr." John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation - Fellows.
  4. Dixon, Brandon J. (29 June 2018). "Gender Studies Appoints Robert Reid-Pharr to Professorship". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 22 August 2018.
  5. Bogliasco Foundation - Fellows.
  6. "Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars to induct 15 new members." Johns Hopkins Magazine 09 April 2015.
  7. "Publishing Triangle - Awards Overview". Archived from the original on 2017-08-22. Retrieved 2017-08-23.
  8. NYU Press publication page for 2007 publication: Reid-Pharr, Robert. Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual. New York: New York University Press, 2007.
  9. NYU Press publication page for 2016 publication: Reid-Pharr, Robert. Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain, and Post-Humanist Critique. New York: New York University Press, 2016.
  10. McRuer, Robert (1 June 2006). Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. NYU Press. ISBN   9780814757130 . Retrieved 27 July 2017 via Google Books.