R.A. Judy

is Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh, and a member of the boundary 2 Editorial Collective. After studying at Al-Azhar University in the College of Arabic Language and Literature, he received a BA in Islamic philosophy and culture from the University of Minnesota in 1981. After completing a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 1990, he authored the ground-breaking book,  (Dis)forming the American Canon: The Vernacular of African Arabic American Slave Narrative (1992), which provided the first translation of the early nineteenth-century Ben Ali Arabic manuscript as the basis for reimagining American cultural history. He is recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including two Mellon Scholar fellowships, a Ford Foundation Minority Fellowship, and a Fulbright Scholars Fellowship to Tunisia. Professor Judy’s published scholarship spans multiple fields from Arabic literature and Islamicate thought to Critical Race Theory and Black Studies. Among some of his more prominent publications are “The Question of Nigga Authenticity,” “Kant and the Negro,” “Sayyid Qutb’s fiqh al- wāqi‘ī, or New Realist Science,” “Some Thoughts on Naguib Mahfouz in the Spirit of Secular Criticism.” and “Fanon’s Body of Black Experience.” Among the important volumes of boundary 2 he has edited are The Tunisia Dossier (2012), and Sociology Hesitant: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Dynamic Thinking (2001), which was Awarded honorary mention by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals in the category of Best Special Issue. His latest book, Sentient Flesh (Thinking in Disorder/Poiēsis in Black) is currently at Duke University Press with a projected publication in 2020.