Roderick A Ferguson
Biographic Data
| ID | 306888 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Roderick A Ferguson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Roderick A |
| FAMILY NAME | Ferguson |
| SIGNATURE | FERGUSON R A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0009-0008-2891-8135 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 208 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Psychopathic Relations and the Super-Patriarch
This essay analyzes the psychopathic (i.e., anti-social) currents within hegemonic social relations—deregulation, environmental devastation, militarization, and the like. The essay locates these currents within patriarchal norms. It also promotes feminist theory as a resource for assessing the psychopathic relations that these norms have produced
On Gary
Queer of Color Critique in a Moment of Danger
Chandan Reddy: This feels like a paradoxical moment—we have, on the one hand, the increasing institutionalization of "queer of color critiques," however uneven, and on the other hand, its ongoing targeting by right-wing and fascist social elements as outside the pale of legitimate social consciousness and educational endeavors. I'd like to begin by inviting each of you to reflect on the political and intellectual genealogies that informed your ea…
The Anti-idealist Black Feminism of The Other Side of Terror
The Anti-idealist Black Feminism of The Other Side of Terror Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) Erica R. Edwards's The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of U.S. Empire, New York: NYU Press, 2021 Erica Edwards's The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of U.S. Empire is a book that provides a necessary interpretation of African American women's literature within the context of twentieth-century U.S. imperial ventures. If it ju…
The Surplus Populations of Black Lives Matter
The Surplus Populations of Black Lives Matter Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) Much of the conversation about the Black Lives Matter movement rightly focuses on its reckoning with antiblack racism in this country. In this way, the movement highlights how antiblack racism structures various social institutions—the police, the prisons, the hospitals, the universities, and so on. There have also been prominent criticisms that the movement fails to acknowl…
Keywords for African American Studies
A new vocabulary for African American Studies As the longest-standing interdisciplinary field, African American Studies has laid the foundation for critically analyzing issues of race, ethnicity, and culture within the academy and beyond. This volume assembles the keywords of this field for the first time, exploring not only the history of those categories but their continued relevance in the contemporary moment. Taking up a vast array of issues …
Bloodflowers
Review Article| November 01 2020 Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson is a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; American studies; African American studies; and ethnicity, race, and migration at Yale University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Nka (2020) 2020 (47): 136–137. https://doi.org/10.1215/10757163-8719729 Cite …
Authoritarianism and the planetary mission of queer of color critique
This contribution to a journal special issue on comparative populisms investigates the necessity and possibility of queer of color critique’s engaging authoritarian formations in the contemporary moment. Initiated as an examination of neoliberal formations, queer of color critique must – the paper argues – train its interests on and develop its theorizations around the emergence of fascist formations around the globe. To do so, it turns to the an…
Purifoy
Purifoy: The Shit, the World, and Their Remaking" analyzes the assemblage artist Noah Purifoy's role in the Watts Rebellion of 1965, paying particular attention to Purifoy's position as the director of the Watts Towers Arts Center and as the artist and organizer of the exhibition "66 Signs of Neon," which was made from the debris produced by the rebellion. The article focuses on how the rebellion and the exhibition arose out of a community's atte…
Time to Heed the Call
A commentary that situates the current violent repression of Portland protesters by federal agents in the context of United States government repression of activism in prior moments of social struggle
To Catch a Light-Filled Vision
To Catch a Light-Filled Vision: American Studies and the Activation of Radical Traditions Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) We are gathered on land first inhabited by the Cherokees and the Muscogee Creeks. We pay respect to elders past and present and to the ancestors who labored for us and who watch over us. Ashe. I bring you greetings from Barbara Ransby down the street. She sends this message to us: “The 2018 ASA program is exciting, provocative and …
Queer of Color Critique
Queer of color critique is a critical discourse that began within the U.S. academy in response to the social processes of migration, neoliberal state and economic formations, and the developments of racial knowledges and subjectivities about sexual and gender minorities within the United States. It was an attempt to maneuver analyses of sexuality toward critiques of race and political economy. As such, the formation was an address to Marxism, eth…
One-Dimensional Queer
The Pulse Nightclub and the State of Our World
Research Article| January 01 2018 The Pulse Nightclub and the State of Our World Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2018) 24 (1): 36–38. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-4254441 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Roderick A. Ferguson; The Pulse Nightclub and the State of Our World. GLQ 1 January 2018; 24 (1): 36–38…
Michael Brown, Ferguson, and the Ghosts of Pruitt-Igoe
The Erotic Positions of African American Literature
Book Review| January 01 2016 The Erotic Positions of African American Literature Against the Closet: Black Political Longing and the Erotics of Race. Abdur-Rahman, Aliyyah I.. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. xi + 200 pp. Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2016) 22 (1): 146–147. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-3315301 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter L…
University
The Distributions of Whiteness
This article argues that the contemporary mode of whiteness acknowledges itself as a historical and social construct but manages to do so without calling for the redistribution of social resources. Hence, as an antiredistributive social formation, we can observe contemporary whiteness as very much in line with its prior-that is, overtly white supremacist-articulation
The Reorder of Things
"In the 1960s and 1970s, minority and women students at colleges and universities across the United States organized protest movements to end racial and gender inequality on campus. African American, Chicano, Asia American, American Indian, women, and queer activists demanded the creation of departments that reflected their histories and experiences, resulting in the formation of interdisciplinary studies programs that hoped to transform both the…
Of Sensual Matters
Of Sensual Matters:On Audre Lorde's "Poetry Is Not a Luxury" and "Uses of the Erotic" Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) We are very familiar with the philosophical discussion about the relationship between the senses and the intellect. After all, writers such as Spinoza, Hume, Saussure, and Freud acquainted us with the idea that the intellect and the senses are in conversation with one another. Far from being a purely philosophical matter, though, the c…
The Sexual and Racial Contradictions of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism has been defined as the shift back to a free market approach to economic governance, championed most famously by Milton Freeman and the “Chicago School” of economics in the 1970s, a s
Queer Studies, Materialism, and Crisis
Research Article| January 01 2012 Queer Studies, Materialism, and Crisis: A Roundtable Discussion Christina Crosby; Christina Crosby Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Lisa Duggan; Lisa Duggan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Roderick Ferguson; Roderick Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Kevin Floyd; Kevin Floyd Search for other works by this author on: This Site G…
The Lateral Moves of African American Studies in a Period of Migration
Strange Affinities
T his book emerged from a desire to identify and invent analytics through which to compare racial formations, in distinction to comparative race scholarship that simply parallels instances of historical similarity across racial groups in the United States.Such a project entails not only articulating commonalities between communities of color but imagining alternative modes of coalition beyond prior models of racial or ethnic solidarity based on a…
The Reorder of Things
In the 1960s and 1970s, minority and women students at colleges and universities across the United States organized protest movements to end racial and gender inequality on campus. African American, Chicano, Asian American, American Indian, women, and gay and lesbian activists demanded the creation of departments that reflected their histories and experiences, resulting in the formation of interdisciplinary studies programs that hoped to transfor…
Theorizing Queer Temporalities
Research Article| June 01 2007 THEORIZING QUEER TEMPORALITIES: A Roundtable Discussion Carolyn Dinshaw; Carolyn Dinshaw Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Lee Edelman; Lee Edelman Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Roderick A. Ferguson; Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Carla Freccero; Carla Freccero Search for other works by this author on: This Site Go…
Queer Studies, Materialism, and Crisis
Research Article| January 01 2012 Queer Studies, Materialism, and Crisis: A Roundtable Discussion Christina Crosby; Christina Crosby Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Lisa Duggan; Lisa Duggan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Roderick Ferguson; Roderick Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Kevin Floyd; Kevin Floyd Search for other works by this author on: This Site G…
The Sexual and Racial Contradictions of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism has been defined as the shift back to a free market approach to economic governance, championed most famously by Milton Freeman and the “Chicago School” of economics in the 1970s, a s
Of Our Normative Strivings
Research Article| December 01 2005 Of Our Normative Strivings: AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES AND THE HISTORIES OF SEXUALITY Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Social Text (2005) 23 (3-4 (84-85)): 85–100. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-23-3-4_84-85-85 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Roderick A. Ferguson; Of Our Normative Strivings: AFRICAN AMERI…
The Distributions of Whiteness
This article argues that the contemporary mode of whiteness acknowledges itself as a historical and social construct but manages to do so without calling for the redistribution of social resources. Hence, as an antiredistributive social formation, we can observe contemporary whiteness as very much in line with its prior-that is, overtly white supremacist-articulation
A Special Place within the Order of Knowledge
A Special Place within the Order of Knowledge:The Art of Kara Walker and the Conventions of African American History Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love. Organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, February 17-May 13, 2007; ARC/Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, June 20-September 9, 2007; Whitney Museum of American Art, October 11, 2007-February 3, 2008; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Ma…
Administering Sexuality; or, The Will to Institutionality
Research Article| January 01 2008 Administering Sexuality; or, The Will to Institutionality Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Radical History Review (2008) 2008 (100): 158–169. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2007-027 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Roderick A. Ferguson; Administering Sexuality; or, The Will to Ins…
University
Of Sensual Matters
Of Sensual Matters:On Audre Lorde's "Poetry Is Not a Luxury" and "Uses of the Erotic" Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) We are very familiar with the philosophical discussion about the relationship between the senses and the intellect. After all, writers such as Spinoza, Hume, Saussure, and Freud acquainted us with the idea that the intellect and the senses are in conversation with one another. Far from being a purely philosophical matter, though, the c…
Queer of Color Critique in a Moment of Danger
Chandan Reddy: This feels like a paradoxical moment—we have, on the one hand, the increasing institutionalization of "queer of color critiques," however uneven, and on the other hand, its ongoing targeting by right-wing and fascist social elements as outside the pale of legitimate social consciousness and educational endeavors. I'd like to begin by inviting each of you to reflect on the political and intellectual genealogies that informed your ea…
Authoritarianism and the planetary mission of queer of color critique
This contribution to a journal special issue on comparative populisms investigates the necessity and possibility of queer of color critique’s engaging authoritarian formations in the contemporary moment. Initiated as an examination of neoliberal formations, queer of color critique must – the paper argues – train its interests on and develop its theorizations around the emergence of fascist formations around the globe. To do so, it turns to the an…
To Catch a Light-Filled Vision
To Catch a Light-Filled Vision: American Studies and the Activation of Radical Traditions Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) We are gathered on land first inhabited by the Cherokees and the Muscogee Creeks. We pay respect to elders past and present and to the ancestors who labored for us and who watch over us. Ashe. I bring you greetings from Barbara Ransby down the street. She sends this message to us: “The 2018 ASA program is exciting, provocative and …
The Pulse Nightclub and the State of Our World
Research Article| January 01 2018 The Pulse Nightclub and the State of Our World Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2018) 24 (1): 36–38. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-4254441 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Roderick A. Ferguson; The Pulse Nightclub and the State of Our World. GLQ 1 January 2018; 24 (1): 36–38…
Michael Brown, Ferguson, and the Ghosts of Pruitt-Igoe
An American Studies Meant for Interruption
An American Studies Meant for Interruption Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) In his presidential address "Of Teachable Moments and Specters of Race," Kevin Gaines raises two noble figures as icons of our critical and intellectual possibilities—John Hope Franklin and Emory Elliot. Franklin and Elliot rightly remind us of our necessary commitments to antiracism, public education, and freedom in the broadest possible sense. Alongside them, Gaines places Pr…
Race Men
Aberrations in Black
The sociology of race relations in America typically describes an intersection of poverty, race, and economic discrimination. But what is missing from the picture - sexual difference - can be as instructive as what is present. In this ambitious work, Roderick A. Ferguson reveals how the discourses of sexuality are used to articulate theories of racial difference in the field of sociology. He shows how canonical sociology - Gunnar Myrdal, Ernest B…
Of Our Normative Strivings
Research Article| December 01 2005 Of Our Normative Strivings: AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES AND THE HISTORIES OF SEXUALITY Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Social Text (2005) 23 (3-4 (84-85)): 85–100. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-23-3-4_84-85-85 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Roderick A. Ferguson; Of Our Normative Strivings: AFRICAN AMERI…
African American Masculinity and the Study of Social Formations
Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900–1930. By Martin Summers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 448 pages. $55.00 (cloth). $21.95 (paper). Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era. By Marlon B. Ross. New York: New York University Press, 2004. 464 pages. $75.00 (cloth). $24.00 (paper). Within the last nine years, black male scholars have produced an …
Theorizing Queer Temporalities
Research Article| June 01 2007 THEORIZING QUEER TEMPORALITIES: A Roundtable Discussion Carolyn Dinshaw; Carolyn Dinshaw Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Lee Edelman; Lee Edelman Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Roderick A. Ferguson; Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Carla Freccero; Carla Freccero Search for other works by this author on: This Site Go…
Administering Sexuality; or, The Will to Institutionality
Research Article| January 01 2008 Administering Sexuality; or, The Will to Institutionality Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Radical History Review (2008) 2008 (100): 158–169. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2007-027 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Roderick A. Ferguson; Administering Sexuality; or, The Will to Ins…
A Special Place within the Order of Knowledge
A Special Place within the Order of Knowledge:The Art of Kara Walker and the Conventions of African American History Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love. Organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, February 17-May 13, 2007; ARC/Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, June 20-September 9, 2007; Whitney Museum of American Art, October 11, 2007-February 3, 2008; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Ma…
The Reorder of Things
In the 1960s and 1970s, minority and women students at colleges and universities across the United States organized protest movements to end racial and gender inequality on campus. African American, Chicano, Asian American, American Indian, women, and gay and lesbian activists demanded the creation of departments that reflected their histories and experiences, resulting in the formation of interdisciplinary studies programs that hoped to transfor…
An American Studies Meant for Interruption
An American Studies Meant for Interruption Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) In his presidential address "Of Teachable Moments and Specters of Race," Kevin Gaines raises two noble figures as icons of our critical and intellectual possibilities—John Hope Franklin and Emory Elliot. Franklin and Elliot rightly remind us of our necessary commitments to antiracism, public education, and freedom in the broadest possible sense. Alongside them, Gaines places Pr…
The Lateral Moves of African American Studies in a Period of Migration
Strange Affinities
T his book emerged from a desire to identify and invent analytics through which to compare racial formations, in distinction to comparative race scholarship that simply parallels instances of historical similarity across racial groups in the United States.Such a project entails not only articulating commonalities between communities of color but imagining alternative modes of coalition beyond prior models of racial or ethnic solidarity based on a…
The Reorder of Things
"In the 1960s and 1970s, minority and women students at colleges and universities across the United States organized protest movements to end racial and gender inequality on campus. African American, Chicano, Asia American, American Indian, women, and queer activists demanded the creation of departments that reflected their histories and experiences, resulting in the formation of interdisciplinary studies programs that hoped to transform both the…
Of Sensual Matters
Of Sensual Matters:On Audre Lorde's "Poetry Is Not a Luxury" and "Uses of the Erotic" Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) We are very familiar with the philosophical discussion about the relationship between the senses and the intellect. After all, writers such as Spinoza, Hume, Saussure, and Freud acquainted us with the idea that the intellect and the senses are in conversation with one another. Far from being a purely philosophical matter, though, the c…
The Sexual and Racial Contradictions of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism has been defined as the shift back to a free market approach to economic governance, championed most famously by Milton Freeman and the “Chicago School” of economics in the 1970s, a s
Queer Studies, Materialism, and Crisis
Research Article| January 01 2012 Queer Studies, Materialism, and Crisis: A Roundtable Discussion Christina Crosby; Christina Crosby Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Lisa Duggan; Lisa Duggan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Roderick Ferguson; Roderick Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Kevin Floyd; Kevin Floyd Search for other works by this author on: This Site G…
The Distributions of Whiteness
This article argues that the contemporary mode of whiteness acknowledges itself as a historical and social construct but manages to do so without calling for the redistribution of social resources. Hence, as an antiredistributive social formation, we can observe contemporary whiteness as very much in line with its prior-that is, overtly white supremacist-articulation
Michael Brown, Ferguson, and the Ghosts of Pruitt-Igoe
The Erotic Positions of African American Literature
Book Review| January 01 2016 The Erotic Positions of African American Literature Against the Closet: Black Political Longing and the Erotics of Race. Abdur-Rahman, Aliyyah I.. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. xi + 200 pp. Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2016) 22 (1): 146–147. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-3315301 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter L…
University
Queer of Color Critique
Queer of color critique is a critical discourse that began within the U.S. academy in response to the social processes of migration, neoliberal state and economic formations, and the developments of racial knowledges and subjectivities about sexual and gender minorities within the United States. It was an attempt to maneuver analyses of sexuality toward critiques of race and political economy. As such, the formation was an address to Marxism, eth…
One-Dimensional Queer
The Pulse Nightclub and the State of Our World
Research Article| January 01 2018 The Pulse Nightclub and the State of Our World Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2018) 24 (1): 36–38. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-4254441 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Roderick A. Ferguson; The Pulse Nightclub and the State of Our World. GLQ 1 January 2018; 24 (1): 36–38…
To Catch a Light-Filled Vision
To Catch a Light-Filled Vision: American Studies and the Activation of Radical Traditions Roderick A. Ferguson (bio) We are gathered on land first inhabited by the Cherokees and the Muscogee Creeks. We pay respect to elders past and present and to the ancestors who labored for us and who watch over us. Ashe. I bring you greetings from Barbara Ransby down the street. She sends this message to us: “The 2018 ASA program is exciting, provocative and …
Keywords for African American Studies
A new vocabulary for African American Studies As the longest-standing interdisciplinary field, African American Studies has laid the foundation for critically analyzing issues of race, ethnicity, and culture within the academy and beyond. This volume assembles the keywords of this field for the first time, exploring not only the history of those categories but their continued relevance in the contemporary moment. Taking up a vast array of issues …
Bloodflowers
Review Article| November 01 2020 Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson Roderick A. Ferguson is a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; American studies; African American studies; and ethnicity, race, and migration at Yale University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Nka (2020) 2020 (47): 136–137. https://doi.org/10.1215/10757163-8719729 Cite …
Sociology (18 works) · Art (16 works) · Race, History, and American Society (16 works) · Political science (14 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Law (12 works) · History (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Art history (8 works) · History (8 works)