C. Riley Snorton is a cultural theorist who focuses on racial, sexual, and transgender histories and cultural productions. He is the author of Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) and Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), which won multiple awards including the John Boswell Prize from the American Historical Association and the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. He is the co-editor of GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies (Duke University Press), Saturation: Race, Art and the Circulation of Value (MIT Press/New Museum, 2020), and The Flesh of the Matter: A Critical Forum on Hortense Spillers (Vanderbilt University Press, 2024).
Snorton will be a Class of 1932 Long-Term Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Department of English in Spring 2025. He will teach a graduate seminar titled “Literary and Culture Theory: Bodies of Transformation.”
