Remembering Quandra Prettyman, Teacher, Activist, Friend
Quandra Prettyman, beloved Barnard Professor of Africana Studies and English, is celebrated by her colleagues, friends, family, and students in this memorial, recorded on January 9, 2022.
Get the memorial program here (PDF)
Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Quandra Prettyman was the daughter of two school teachers. A curious, adventurous child, she saw the world as her playground. After studying history at Antioch College (1950-54) and English at the University of Michigan (1955-57), Quandra made New York City her home base: she worked in publishing and began teaching while initiating a lifetime of travel abroad, with regular trips to Amsterdam. Her welcoming apartment on the Upper West Side, in which every room was a library, showed her passion for making visible the parts of life buried in archives and books. Quandra herself was living history, often sharing stories of her friendships with luminaries like Coretta Scott King and James Baldwin and teaching newcomers the history of Black Barnard. Her home was a salon where gossip, knowledge, food, and drinks were served in abundance. It was also a haven for friends and students who needed a sudden place to stay or a shoulder to lean on.
Professor Prettyman joined the Barnard College Department of English in 1970. In addition to teaching writing, she created courses new to the College (and sometimes new to the field) such as The Harlem Renaissance; Slavery: the Woman’s Experience; Black and White; Minority Women Writers in the US (Native American, African American, Latina, Asian American); Literature of the Great Migration; and Early African American literature 1760-1890. Even after Professor Prettyman’s official “retirement,” she continued teaching, offering “Explorations in Black Literature: 1760-1890,” as recently as the fall of 2019. A poet since her college days, her work appears in Arnold Adoff’s The Poetry of Black America (1973), among other venues. She edited Out of Our Lives: A Selection of Contemporary Black Fiction in 1975. Her lifelong interest in cookbooks and recipes led her to publish one of the earliest academic articles on African American Foodways, “Come Eat at My Table: Lives with Recipes” published by Southern Quarterly in 1992. In 2019, the Africana Studies department created the Quandra Prettyman Prize, given to a graduating senior, who like Quandra, embodies intellectual curiosity, generosity of spirit, constant growth, and a belief in the generative power of community.
Professor Prettyman passed away on the morning of October 21, 2021. She is survived by her daughter, Johanna Stadler, her sister, Waltyn Prettyman, her stepchildren, Sean Yau-Smith and Michelle DiPalma, and numerous honorary grandchildren.