R. A. Judy

R.A.'s Affiliations: boundary 2

R. A. Judy teaches courses related to the fields of Comparative literature, Black Critique, World Literature with particular emphasis on Arabic, and African Literature, as well as Semiotics and Literary Theory.

Research and Publications

His research interests include Black Critique, the history of ideas, cultural studies, contemporary Arabic literature and thought, political philosophy, epistemology, and poetics. 

Having studied at al-Azhar University, he holds degrees in Islamic philosophy and culture, and Comparative Literature from the University of Minnesota. He is author of (Dis)forming the American Canon: The Vernacular of African Arabic American Slave Narrative (1992), and Sentient Flesh: Thinking in Disorder, Poiēsis in Black (2020). He has published numerous essays in the areas of philosophy, contemporary Islamic philosophy, literary/cultural theory, music, and Arabic and American literatures. Among these are: “Restless Tunisians” in La Tunisie du XXIe siècle: Quels pouvoirs pour quels modèles de société? (EuroOrient, 2012), “Dreaming About the Singularity of the New Middle Ages: Three Provisional Notes on the Question of Imagination” (Critical Zone 3, 2009); “Some Thoughts on Naguib Mahfouz in the Spirit of Secular Criticism” (boundary 2, 2007), “Sayyid Qutb’s fiqh al- waqi‘i, or New Realist Science” (boundary 2, 2004), “The Threat to Islamic Humanity After 11 September 2001” (Critical Quarterly, 2003), “September 11 Uttorkal O Bipponno Islami Manobota” (Abobhash 3, 2003), “Islamiyya and the Construction of Human Being” in Trends in Islamic Thought (1998), “The New Black Aesthetic and W.E.B. Du Bois, or Hephaestus, Limping” (The Massachusetts Review, 1994), “The Question of Nigga Authenticity” (boundary 2, 1994), and “Kant and the Negro,” (Surfaces, 1991). He has also edited numerous special issues and dossiers for boundary 2, among which are: Tunisia Dossier (2012), Ralph Ellison: The Next Fifty Years (2003); Sociology Hesitant: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Dynamic Thinking (2001), Reasoning and the Logic of Things Global, (1999), and Scattered Speculations on Value: Exchange Between Etienne Balibar, Antonio Negri, and Gayatri Spivak  (1999).