Richard Purcell

Assistant Professor of English

Bio

I teach a range of upper and lower division undergraduate and graduate courses in everything from American and African-American literature, film and media studies, modernism, hip-hop culture and critical theory.  My forthcoming book, Race, Ralph Ellison and American Cold War Literature (1945-1978), uses the work of author Ralph Ellison to reveal the under-acknowledged but critical role race played in the cultural Cold War. In my next book project, I will investigate the conditions of contemporary knowledge that have produced "post-race" idealism.