Eric Sundquist is an American scholar of the literature and culture of the United States. Sundquist earned his B.A. from the University of Kansas (1974) and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University (1978). Sundquist is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities and former chair of the English Department at Johns Hopkins. He is a former member of the UCLA Department of English, and was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University.
Sundquist was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997 for contributions to his field. In 2006 he received the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award, the largest research award in the humanities.
Sundquist is a close personal friend of noted literary scholar and jazz musician Michael Colacurcio.