William Pruitt

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.