Roderick Ferguson

Roderick Ferguson is a professor of African American and Gender and Women's Studies in the African American Studies Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC).^[1] Previously, he was a professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (UMN)^[2] His academic interests include African-American literature, queer theory and queer studies, classical and contemporary social theory, African-American intellectual history, sociology of race and ethnic relations, and black cultural theory.^[2] Ferguson is also known for his critique of the modern university and the corporatization of higher education, in particular.

Life

Ferguson received his B.A. in Sociology from Washington, D.C.'s Howard University in 1994 before going on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Sociology program at the University of California, San Diego.^[2] He is the recipient of the Modern Language Association's "Crompton-Noll Award" in 2000, which awards the "best essay in lesbian, gay, and queer studies in the modern languages," for his article, "The Parvenu Baldwin and the Other Side of Redemption." He served as associate editor of American Quarterly: The Journal of the American Studies Association from 2007 to 2010 and filled the position of Department Chair in American Studies at the University of Minnesota from 2009-2012.^[3]

Ferguson is most renowned for the concept of "queer of color critique" from his book Aberrations in Black, which is exemplified by the work of Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, Barbara Smith, and the Combahee River Collective and said to be critiques that do not presume homogeneity across racial or national groups. Instead, they offer powerful relational analyses of the racialized, gendered, and sexualized valuation and devaluation of human life.^[4]

Works

• The Reorder of Things: The University and its Pedagogies of Minority Difference, University of Minnesota Press, 2012, ISBN 9780816672790
• Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. U of Minnesota Press. 2004. ISBN 9780816641284. 
• Grace Kyungwon Hong, Roderick A. Ferguson, eds. (2011). Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization. Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822349853.  CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)

References

1. ↑ Roderick Ferguson. Faculty page
2. 1 2 3 Roderick Ferguson : First-Year Writing : University of Minnesota
3. ↑ The Archives and Genealogies of Intersectionality | Department of English
4. ↑ Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization (Perverse Modernities): Grace Kyungwon Hong, Roderick A. Ferguson: 9780822349853: Amazon.com: B...