![Headshot of James Ford III](/sites/default/files/styles/faculty_profile_image/public/faculty-images/ford_james_400x400.jpg)
Ford鈥檚 several book projects bring these various fields into conversation. His first book, Thinking through Crisis: Depression-Era Black Literature, Theory and Politics, claims that Humanities scholars have understated the ways that agency can irrupt from traumatic experience. Ford uses Black radical writing from the 1930s as a test case for a new approach to theorizing trauma.
While Thinking through Crisis attends to 1930s Black writing to intervene in theoretical debates, Ford鈥檚 second and third books hope to reinterpret the arc of Black American cultural production. Phillis, the Black Swan: Disheveling the Origins of African American Letters, studies how Phillis Wheatley鈥檚 poetry and correspondence imagines humanity outside the doubled tyranny of political slavery and chattel slavery. In Hip-Hop鈥檚 Late Style: Liner Notes to an Aesthetic Theory, Ford reframes hip-hop as an experiment with various styles of life that might survive the end of the American century. Rather than focus on a single 鈥淕olden Era鈥 of Black American life, Ford鈥檚 several books investigate Black America鈥檚 creative endurance over and against the ebb and flow of American imperial power.
Ford teaches American literature and African American literature in the English Departments and Black Studies major, respectively. He teaches with a 鈥淏-sides approach鈥 that incorporates literary classics and lesser known literary works into all of his syllabi. In doing so, he introduces students to the vastness of Black writing in terms of content, genre, and historical context. Some of his most popular courses include ,听,听,听and .
Education | Academic Positions | Research Interests | Publications | Conferences Activities & Lectures
Teaching听触 Awards | Professional Membership听触 References
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Education
Degree History
Ph.D, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana (2009)
M.A., University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana (2006)
B.A., Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia (2003)
Non-Degree Seminar
鈥淏lack Intellectuals,鈥澨齋chool of Criticism and Theory, Cornell University (Spring 2006)
Academic Positions
Associate Professor, swag外流 (2018 鈥 Present)
Assistant Professor, swag外流 (2012 鈥 2018)
Adjunct Professor, swag外流 (2010 鈥 2012)
Research Interests
Late 19th to Mid-20th Century African American Literature, Aesthetics of Black Radicalism, W.E.B. Du Bois Studies, Marxist Thought, Aesthetic Philosophy, Black Popular Culture
Publications
Work in Print
鈥淭hinking through Crisis: Depression-Era African American Literature, History, and Politics,鈥 鈥淐ommonalities鈥 Series, Ed. by Timothy Campbell, Fordham University Press (2019)
鈥淭he Sound of Breaking: On Experimental Writing, Sound Studies, and Hip-Hop,鈥 Critical forum on Carter Mathes鈥 Imagine the Sound: Experimental African American Literature After Civil Rights, Ed. Tyler Bradway, College Literature (Winter 2019)
鈥淥n Black Study and Political Theology,鈥 Cultural Critique Issue 101, Ed. Caesar Caesarino (Fall 2018)
鈥淭he Difficult Miracle: Reading Phillis Wheatley Against the Master鈥檚 Discourse,鈥 New Centennial Review, Ed. Nahum Chandler (Fall 2018)
鈥淎n African Diasporic Critique of Violence: Walter Benjamin and Phillis Wheatley Reading the Niobe Legend,鈥 Systems of Life: Politics, Economics, and the Biological Sciences, 1750-1850, Ed. Timothy Campbell, Richard Barney and Warren Montag, Fordham University Press (2018)
鈥淭he Imperial Miracle: Black Reconstruction and the End(s) of White Supremacy,鈥 The Political Companion to W.E.B. Du Bois, Ed. Nick Bromell, University of Kentucky Press
鈥淚nterrupting the System: Spinoza and Maroon Thought,鈥 Spinoza鈥檚 Authority: Resistance and Power, Ed. A Kordela Kiarina and Dimitri Vardoulakis, Northwestern University Press (2017)
鈥淢orbid Perseverance: The Internal Border and White Supremacy,鈥 Balibar and the Citizen-Subject, Ed. Hanan Sayed and Warren Montag, University of Edinburgh Press (2017)
鈥淲.E.B. Du Bois,鈥 Oxford Bibliographies Series, Literary and Critical Theory, (Summer 2017)
鈥淚da B. Wells,鈥 Oxford Bibliographies Series, African American Studies, (Summer 2016)
鈥淚ntroduction: Fugitivity and the Filmic Imagination,鈥 Dossier in Black Camera (Fall 2015)
鈥淏lackness and Legend: Django Unchained and Ensemble Film Performance,鈥 in 鈥淔ugitivity and the Filmic Imagination鈥 Dossier in Black Camera (Fall 2015)
鈥淥n the Novel and Civic Myth: A Review of Salamishah Tillet鈥檚 Sites of Slavery,鈥 听Novel: A Forum on Fiction, (Fall 2015)
鈥淪pace is the Place: Afrofuturist Elegy in Tracy K Smith鈥檚 Life on Mars,鈥 Black Scholar, Paradigm Press, 鈥淪truggles for Democracy鈥 Special Issue (Spring 2014)
鈥淒own by the Riverside: Race, Class, and the Drive for Citizenship,鈥 Novel: A Forum for Fiction, Duke University Press (Fall 2013)
鈥淔rom Being to Unrest, From Objectivity to Motion: The Slave in Karl Marx鈥檚 Capital,鈥 Rethinking Marxism (January 2011)
鈥淢ob Rule in New Orleans: Anarchy, Governance, and Media Representation,鈥 Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 33.1 (Winter 2010), special issue, 鈥淧ersonal Narratives and Political Discourse,鈥 Ed. by Sidonie Smith
Work Accepted, Forthcoming
鈥淎nti-Anti-Racism and the American Assumption,鈥 Symposium on Andrew Douglas鈥檚 W.E.B. Du Bois and the Critique of the Competitive Society, Political Theory (Forthcoming 2020)
鈥淪tanklove: Hearing Outkast鈥檚 Afro-Futurist Erotics,鈥 Outkasted Conversations: A Hip-Hop Studies Reader, Ed. Regina Bradley, University of Georgia Press (Forthcoming Fall 2020)
Work in Progress
Book Projects
鈥淗ip-Hop鈥檚 Late Style: Liner Notes to an Aesthetic Theory,鈥 claims that debates over the 鈥渄eath鈥 of U.S. hip-hop are displaced anxieties about the foreclosure of the American Century. By theorizing hip-hop as a form of 鈥渓ate style,鈥 I claim that hip-hop offers insights into a style of life that can survive this moment of sociopolitical transition. (Projected completion: 2024)
鈥淧hillis, the Black Swan: Disheveling the Origins of African Diasporic Writing鈥 restores the untimely, restless, radical force of Wheatley鈥檚 Poems on Various Subjects by dismantling Thomas Jefferson鈥檚 infamous rejection of her poetry and clarifying her primary aim: to redefine humanity beyond the double tyranny of political oppression and chattel slavery. (Projected completion: 2028)
Select Conference Activities and Lectures
鈥淭he Slave in Karl Marx鈥檚 Capital, Revisited,鈥 MLA Annual Conference (Jan 10, 2020)
鈥淟earning the Corrupted Tongue: Phillis Wheatley, the University, and the Politics of Diasporic Return,鈥 MLA Annual Conference, Chicago (Jan 6, 2019)
鈥淒isheveling the Origins: Impossible Canonicity in African Diasporic Writing,鈥 Fellowship Colloquium, Library Company of Philadelphia, (May 17, 2017)
鈥淭he Difficult Miracle: Reading Wheatley Against the Master鈥檚 Discourse,鈥 Young Scholars Lecture Series, University of California Consortium for Black Studies in California, UC Irvine, (April 28, 2016)
鈥淏eyond the Land of the Living, All Things are Possible: Spiritual Zombiehood and Re-Animation in U.S. Hip-Hop Culture,鈥 Show and Prove Hip-Hop Conference, U.C. Riverside, 2016 (April 8, 2016)
鈥溾楥oncerning Violence鈥: Lauryn Hill, Frantz Fanon, and Anticolonial Inheritance,鈥 Affect Theory Conference, Millersville University (Oct 17, 2015)
鈥淭he Frenzy: Ecstasy and Hip-Hop Aesthetics鈥 American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting (March 28, 2015)
鈥淕ood Kid in the M.A.A.D. City: LA Hip-Hop and the Afro-Surreal鈥, on the panel, 鈥淭he Pleasures and Pains of Hip-Hop Listening,鈥 American Studies Association Annual Meeting (Nov 9, 2014)
鈥淚nterruption of the System: Spinoza and Maroon Thought,鈥 American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting (March 21, 2014)
鈥淎 Dream Deferred or the Dream in Deferral? Hip-Hop鈥檚 Chopped and Screwed Aesthetics鈥, 鈥淧si #19: Now Then: Performance and Temporality,鈥 Stanford University (June 26, 2013)
鈥淟istening to The Love Below: Hip-Hop鈥檚 Afro-futuristic Eroticism,鈥 at Alien Bodies: Race, Space, and Sex in the African Diaspora Conference, Emory University (February 8, 2013)
鈥淎n African Diasporic Critique of Violence: The Niobe Legend in the Writing of Walter Benjamin and Phillis Wheatley,鈥 鈥淪ystem of Life: Economies, Politics, and the Biological Sciences, 1750 鈥 1850,鈥 Huntington Library (Nov 8, 2012)
鈥淎n Ode to the Raw: Dissonance in Hip-Hop Aesthetics,鈥 Presented on the panel 鈥淲u Tang Across the Eras鈥 Show and Prove Hip-Hop Studies Conference, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (March 29 -31, 2012)
鈥溾楽hadows of Tomorrow鈥: Hip-Hop Aesthetics and the Archive,鈥 Presented on the Panel 鈥淭heorizing Hip-Hop as Intellectual Production鈥 at the Annual MLA Conference, Seattle (January 2012)
鈥淐ontemporary Hip-Hop Aesthetics and the Tragedy of US Imperialism,鈥 Presented on Panel, 鈥淭he World is Yours: On Hip-hop and Global Liberation,鈥 Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora, University of Pittsburgh (November 2011)
鈥淚nterruption of the System: Negri, Spinoza and Maroon Political Desire,鈥 Rethinking Marxism Conference: New Marxian Times, UMASS at Amherst (November 2009)
鈥淭he 鈥楥oming of the Lord鈥: W.E.B Du Bois鈥檚 John Brown and the Rethinking of Messianism,鈥 John Brown Symposium, Harpers Ferry, WV (October 2009)
鈥淢ob Rule in New Orleans and Ida B Wells鈥檚 Critique of Anarchy,鈥 Rupture, Repression, and Uprising: Raced and Gendered Violence in the 20th Century, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (April 2008)
Selected听Teaching
- 鈥淛oyful Noise: On Black Literature and Black Musicality,鈥 Lower-Level English/Black Studies Course, swag外流
- 鈥淎merican Poetry, Pleasure, and Politics,鈥 Upper-Level English Course, swag外流
- 鈥淭he Evolution of W.E.B. Du Bois,鈥 Graduate School Course, Cultural Studies Department, Claremont Graduate University
- 鈥淧hillis Wheatley and Her Afterlives,鈥 Junior English Seminar, swag外流
- 鈥淎merican Literature, From the Founding 鈥 1900: On Tyranny and Anti-tyrannical Writing,鈥 Upper-Level English Course, swag外流
- 鈥淟iterature and the Other Arts: Afrofuturism,鈥 Upper-Level English Course, swag外流
- 鈥淟iterary Methodologies,鈥 Lower-Level English Seminar, swag外流
- 鈥淏eautiful Democracy: 19th Century Black Writing,鈥 Upper-Level English/Black Studies Course, swag外流
- 鈥淭he Global 1930s,鈥 Upper-Level English Course, swag外流 English Department, swag外流
- 鈥淭he Artist鈥檚 Life,鈥 First Year Cultural Studies Program, swag外流
- 鈥淎merican Experiences: Rhetoric of War,鈥 Lower Level English Course, swag外流
- 鈥淗ip Hop鈥檚 Late Style,鈥 Lower-Level English Course, swag外流
- 鈥淗ip-Hop and Aesthetic Philosophy,鈥 First Year Cultural Studies Course, swag外流
- 鈥淏lack Reconstruction: Radicalism in African American Literature,鈥 Lower-Level English Course, swag外流
Awards
- Donald and Mary Hyde Fellowship for Research in Early Modern Black Lives, 1500 鈥 1800 (Summer 2019, $3,600)
- Faculty Enrichment Grant, swag外流 (Summer 2017, $2,000)
- Short-Term Research Fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia, (Summer 2017, $2,500)
- Short-Term Research Fellowship, Friends of Princeton Library, (Summer 2016, $3,500)
- Short-Term Research Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society (Summer 2016, $1,850) (Declined Award)
- Mellon Digital Humanities Faculty Fellow, Center for Digital Learning and Research, swag外流 (Spring 2015)
- Faculty Enrichment Grant, swag外流, (Fall 2015)
- Visiting Assistant Professor, Mellon Curricular Planning Fellowship, swag外流 (Fall 2011 鈥 Summer 2012)
- Summer Fellow, Mellon Fellowship for Digital Scholarship Institute, swag外流 (Summer 2011)