Don Holmes

Don Holmes originally from Progress, Mississippi, joins the English Department as an Assistant Professor. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests span 18^th and 19^th-century African American literature, rhetoric and culture. Specifically, Holmes investigates the narratives of early Black writers and speakers as a way to uncover their generative responses to anti-Black subjugation and anti-democratic practices during the colonial and antebellum eras.

Holmes’ first book project, “Black Ambassadors: Rhetoric, Justice, and Black Diplomacy in Early America,” redefines how we think about what role early Black historical writing plays in our conception of American intellectual history. He is working on one public facing project that explores the writing relationship between Phillis Wheatley-Peters and George Washington (1776) (commissioned by George Washington’s Mt. Vernon). Holmes is also finishing up an article project exploring how Lunsford Lane (1842) uses a constitutive rhetoric to persuade both abolitionist and pro-slavery audiences. Prior to coming to the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Holmes served as a Lecturer of English at Carnegie Mellon University.