Don Holmes

Don Holmes, originally from Progress, Mississippi, is an Assistant Professor of English. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2021 and a BA (Magna Cum Laude) from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2014. His research interests span early African American literature, rhetoric, and culture from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. Specifically, Holmes investigates the narratives of early Black writers and speakers to uncover their generative responses to anti-Black subjugation and anti-democratic practices during the colonial and antebellum eras. Holmes’ first book project, tentatively titled “For Freedom’s Cause: African American Rhetoric of Responsibility and Spirituality,” traces how Black Africans (later African Americans) mobilized a cadre of rhetorical and literary resources to hold those in power to account. It is through an African American intellectual history (written discourse) that we can best shape the types of collective spirituality that offer intimacy, care, and empathy that could inform how this community defeated the barbaric practices of slavery during the antebellum era. Professor Holmes’ work on Phillis Wheatley Peters has been published in Early American Literature, ABO: Interactive Journal For Women in the Arts, 1640-1830, and featured in the George Washington’s Presidential Library at Mt. Vernon. Forthcoming work on Wheatley Peters will be featured in an edited collection about her engagement during the American Revolution. Professor Holmes teaches in the English Department’s Composition and Literature programs.

Courses Taught:

English 1200: American Literature to 1860

EngLIT: 0570: American Literature

EngCMP: 0570: Topics in Black Rhetoric

EngCMP: 2264: Graduate Seminar in Black Rhetorical History

English: 0200: Compostion