Erick DuPree is an anthropologist, author, and essayist.

Gene Marshall doll by Mel Odom, and produced in resin by Jamieshow wearing Blue Goddess fashion

Gene Marshall © Tom Logan

Dr. Erick DuPree is currently conducting research for his upcoming book, The History of Fashion Dolls: From Bru to Barbie and Beyond, an exploration of the cultural, emotional, artistic, and historical significance of fashion dolls and the people who collect them.

Through surveys, interviews, and collector reflections, the project examines how fashion dolls function not simply as toys, but as objects connected to memory, identity, glamour, creativity, gender, nostalgia, and emotional life across generations

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Articles

ARTICLES

History of Fashion Dolls

Plastic Closets: Fashion Dolls, Queer Identity, and the Performance of Self

History of Fashion Dolls

From Gay Bob and Earring Magic Ken to RuPaul and Trixie Mattel, this essay explores how fashion dolls became unlikely icons of queer identity, camp, drag, and gender performance — revealing how dolls have long shaped ideas about selfhood, glamour, and reinvention.

History of Fashion Dolls

How Mel Odom’s Gene Revolutionized the Modern Fashion Doll

History of Fashion Dolls

Discover how Mel Odom and Gene Marshall revolutionized modern fashion doll collecting through Old Hollywood glamour, 16-inch scale, storytelling, articulation, and the rise of adult collector culture.

History of Fashion Dolls

Dolls & Culture

5 Things I’ve Learned Researching Dolls

Dolls & Culture

5 things learned from studying dolls, including gender, queer identity, material culture, memory, collecting, childhood, glamour, and emotional attachment.

Dolls & Culture

A man with glasses and a beard sitting at a wooden table with his arms crossed, next to a stack of two large books about dolls, with a fashion doll in a black and white striped swimsuit standing on top of the books. The background is plain gray.

Dr. Erick DuPree is an anthropologist (PhD, Queen’s University) and scholar of dolls and material culture.

He is author of the critically acclaimed book, Dolls Beyond Play: The Cultural Significance of Dolls. His research examines dolls as cultural objects through the lenses of identity, memory, and social meaning, helping expand contemporary conversations around dolls as serious subjects of cultural study.

His curatorial and consulting work includes collaborations with museums, historical societies, private collectors, and auction houses, where he has contributed expertise on doll collections, provenance, historical interpretation, and collection development.

His writing has been featured in New York Magazine, Huffington Post, and Doll Reader Magazine, Erick has lectured at the University of Pennsylvania, and taught at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of the Arts. Across his essays, teaching, and public work, he brings an anthropological lens to the ways identity, desire, memory, and culture are continually shaped over time.

Erick loves talking about dolls, and is available for podcasts, interviews, lectures, and conversations exploring dolls, culture, identity, and material history.

CONTACT

Note: While Erick is a scholar of dolls and collecting history, he is not a certified doll appraiser and cannot provide monetary valuations for individual dolls or collections.