John Drabinski

John E. Drabinski is Professor jointly appointed in the Department of English and the Department of African American Studies. He the author of four books, most recently Glissant and the Middle Passage: Philosophy, Beginning, Abyss (Minnesota 2019) and Levinas and the Postcolonial: Race, Nation, Other (Edinburgh 2012; winner of the Frantz Fanon Book Prize from the Caribbean Philosophical Association), editor of a half-dozen volumes on key figures in Atlantic thought, and has published dozens of articles of post-structuralist and black Atlantic critical theory. He is completing a book-length study of James Baldwin entitled ‘So Unimaginable a Price’: Baldwin and the Black Atlantic and a short work on the idea of “the afro-postmodern” tentatively titled What is the Afro-Postmodern?

His teaching works at the intersections of critical theory, cultural studies, and vernacular culture and politics. In particular, he is interested in how vernacular cultural practices operate as forms of resistance and world making in afro-Caribbean and African-American traditions with focus on figures such as Alain Locke, Suzanne Césaire, Édouard Glissant, James Baldwin, Albert Murray, Angela Davis, and others.

Drabinski holds an A.B. (1991) in Philosophy and English from Seattle University and a M.A. (1993) and PhD (1996) in Philosophy from University of Memphis, where he was trained in post-structuralist thought and the foundations of critical race theory. He was formerly Charles Hamilton Houston 1915 Professor of Black Studies at Amherst College and was a fellow at The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University in 2013-1014. He maintains a professional website jdrabinski.com, at which you can read about his research interests, teaching experience, and current writing projects.