Erick DuPree, PhD is a cultural anthropologist, occult historian, and award-winning author whose work bridges material culture, gender studies, literary analysis, and contemplative practice. With a background in both academic scholarship and esoteric traditions, DuPree explores how ritual, identity, and power are shaped through objects, texts, and lived experience across time.
A leading expert on dolls and material culture, Erick is the author of Dolls Beyond Play: The Cultural Significance of Dolls, the first major academic study to trace the evolution of dolls from prehistoric figurines to contemporary collectibles.
Their current research in occult history investigates how talismans, ritual tools, and devotional images—from medieval relics to 18th- and 19th-century ceremonial magic, Rosicrucian symbolism, Spiritualism, and Theosophy—carry esoteric meaning.
Erick earned their doctorate from Queen’s University, where their dissertation examined religious pluralism and 11th-century Japanese court literature, culminating in a modern translation and analysis of Murasaki Shikibu’s court diary and its influence on contemporary marriage politics.
Their writing has appeared in HuffPost, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, New York Magazine, The Wild Hunt, Bitch, and Patheos, among others. Erick is the author of Awaken to Mindfulness: Cultivating Daily Practice & Wellbeing, praised for its grounded, accessible approach to meditation and awareness, and a contributor to anthologies including Masculinity: An Anthology of Modern Voices, BOLD, and editor of Men and the Goddess.
They have lectured on mythopoetics at the University of Pennsylvania, taught material culture at the University of the Arts, and served as literary reviews editor for Cleaver Literary Review. Erick has also consulted for the Netflix docuseries The Toys That Made Us and was recently featured on A Jaded Gay Podcast, Episode 89: “Beyond the Brawn.”
Erick lives on the East Coast with their husband and their beloved dogs.