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Tommy Curry

 

Education

Ph.D: Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, December 2008.
M.A.: Philosophy, DePaul University, June 2004.
B.A.: Philosophy, Political Science, Black American Studies (minor), Southern Illinois University Carbondale: December 2001.

 

Areas of Interest

Critical Race Theory
Africana Philosophy
Post-Colonialism
Africana Womanism/Black Feminism and Black Masculinity Studies
Social/Political Philosophy and Jurisprudence

 

Tommy J. Curry’s work spans across the various fields of philosophy, jurisprudence, Africana Studies, and Gender Studies. Though trained in American and Continental philosophical traditions, Curry’s primary research interests are in Critical Race Theory and Africana Philosophy. In Critical Race Theory, Curry looks at the work of Derrick Bell and his theory of racial realism as an antidote to the proliferating discourses of racial idealism that continue to uncritically embrace liberalism through the appropriation of European thinkers as the basis of racial reconciliation in the United States. Looking at the later works of W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, and Frantz Fanon, Curry’s scholarship argues that racial realism—the idea that racism is in fact a permanent feature of American society—was an accepted social political philosophy well into the 20th century. In Africana philosophy, Curry’s work turns an eye towards the conceptual genealogy of African American thought from 1800 to the present, with particular attention towards the scholars of the American Negro Academy and the Negro Society for Historical Research. This historical focus towards the intellectual history of African descended people in America and the Caribbean aims to account for the origins of prominent Africana traditions like: Pan-Africanism, African-centered thinking, Africana Womanism, Black Feminism, Black Nationalism, the Caribbean School of Economic Thought, Critical Race Theory and Hip-Hop Radicalism.  

Currently, Curry is working on his recently contracted republication of William H. Ferris’ The African Abroad or, His Evolution in Western Civilization: Tracing His Development Under Caucasian Milieu and a monograph tentatively entitled: Nationist Dawn: Philosophical Reflections on Black Solidarity Amidst the Myth of Post-Racialism.