Ph.D. Miami University, Rhetoric and Composition, 2019 M.A. Miami University, Rhetoric and Composition, 2015 Certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Miami University, 2015 Dual B.A. Northern Kentucky University, English Literature; Philosophy, 2012 Perpetually curious of language, the material world, queerness, and place, Dr. Caleb Pendygraft is a Kentucky Appalachian who received his PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His book, Reading, Writing, and Queer Survival: Affects, Matterings, and Literacies Across Appalachia (UPKY, 2025), has been praised as a “trailblazing book” that “will undoubtedly have a lasting influence in how we think about literacy, queerness, and Appalachia,” and as an “unequivocally a groundbreaking and necessary book for our time.” His other work has appeared in Appalachian Journal, The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, Bodies of Knowledge: Embodied Rhetorics in Theory and Practice, Journal of Appalachian Studies, and Storytelling in Queer Appalachia: Imagining and Writing the Unspeakable Other. Currently he is nearing the close of his memoir, titled Callin' Down the Spirit (forthcoming 2026), while starting another adventure co-editing a queer eco-spiritual collection of Appalachian voices. When he isn't teaching or writing, you can usually find him either barefooted, digging through his brambled garden, tending to the PendyCats, or visiting Atlantic sands thinking about the hills.
