Catherine Jean Prendergast is an American literary scholar. She is professor of English at the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

Biography

Prendergast received her B.A. from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1990 and a Ph.D. from the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

. Her research focuses on the intersections of social and literary, cultural movements as well as the spread of the English language. Her book ''Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education'' (2003) has won the Mina P. Shaughnessy Award from the

Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "st ...

for "an outstanding scholarly book in the fields of language, culture, literacy, and literature that has a strong application to the teaching of English." Prendergast received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 2014 for her book, ''The Gilded Edge,'' which investigates the circumstances surrounding the suicides of

Nora May French Nora May French (1881 – November 13, 1907) was an American poet and member of the bohemian literary circles of the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club which flourished after the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. Biography French was b ...

George Sterling George Sterling (December 1, 1869 – November 17, 1926) was an American writer based in the San Francisco, California Bay Area and Carmel-by-the-Sea. He was considered a prominent poet and playwright and proponent of Bohemianism during the f ...

, and Carrie Sterling by cyanide ingestion''.''

Personal life and family

Her father, Kevin H. Prendergast, was the chair of Columbia's astronomy department known for his work in the field of many-body systems. Her uncle, Robert Prendergast, was a coxswain for Columbia's rowing team who painted the blue and white "C" over the Spuyten Duyvil cliff and later a professor at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

References

Living people Columbia College (New York) alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni American women academics Women scholars and academics Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-academic-bio-stub