Bryant is the inaugural Academic Chair of Sullivan Honors College.  After teaching at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Georgia, Bryant came to Temple in 2004.  From the moment he arrived on campus, he has regularly taught in Sullivan (formerly the Honors Program), developing new classes that engaged the places and people around Temple. One of these classes focuses on the Uptown Theater, just north of Main Campus.  The “real” classroom for former Temple students, Hall and Oates, the Uptown was Philly’s version of the famed Apollo Theatre, where every great soul and R & B act from Ray Charles to the Temptations to the Jackson 5 played when they were in town. He also developed an honors class on the Rocky franchise, where students watched and discussed every single film in the series and took a four-hour tour of the city with a Rocky impersonator.  As Academic Chair, he tries to encourage other faculty members to develop their own “dream” classes.     

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (twice for his BA and PhD), Bryant is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of History and 2020 recipient of Temple's Great Teacher Award. He is the author of five books, including his most recent, For Customers Only: Public Bathrooms and the Making of American Inequality. His essays and commentary has appeared in the Washington Post, New Republic, the Root.com, Christian Science Monitor, New York Review of Books, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.  He is a regular guest on the History Channel, and he has appeared in documentaries about Starbucks, blue jeans, Monopoly, the Jersey shore, and Alabama-based rock and roll band, the Drive-By Truckers. 

Bryant is an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Speaker, an elected member of the Society of the American Historians, and the former President of the Southern Labor Studies Association.     

A native of Vineland, New Jersey, the largest (by area) city in the Garden State, Bryant now lives as an empty nester in West Philadelphia and Ventnor.  When he isn’t taking pictures of public bathrooms, you can find him at the West Philly Y or walking along the Boardwalk listening to a podcast.  Actually, he is looking for suggestions for hobbies. Do you have any?   

Talk to Bryant about: