This event has been postponed, but will be rescheduled at a later date. Thank you for your understanding.

Get to know new humanities faculty at UB at the Humanities Institute’s brown-bag lunch sessions. FREE and open to the public. Coffee and cookies provided.

Eric Darnell Pritchard is an award-winning writer, cultural critic, and Associate Professor of English at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). He is also on the faculty of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. He earned his BA in English-Liberal Arts (magna cum laude) from Lincoln University, the nation’s oldest historically Black college and university (HBCU). He also earned an MA in Afro-American Studies and a PhD in English (with distinction) from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Eric’s research and teaching focuses on the intersections of race, queerness, sexuality, gender and class with historical and contemporary literacy, literary, and rhetorical practices, as well as fashion, beauty, and popular culture.

This presentation, drawing from research toward a biographical study, will explore the aesthetics of fashion superstar, Patrick Kelly. Born and raised in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Kelly moved to Paris and built a style empire. He reached the pinnacle of global fashion success when he became the first American designer admitted into the prestigious fashion institution, the Chambre syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode. The focus of the presentation is the ways Kelly used fashion, style and performance as a site of productive tension for an exploration of race, class, and taste informed by his Mississippi roots and at the complex collision of art and commerce.