Kennan Ferguson, New Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies at UWM

Kennan ScotlandCongratulations to Kennan Ferguson who is the new Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies (C21), starting with the 2015-16 academic year. He is an associate professor of political science at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

As a political theorist, Kennan is known for his work on the politics of everyday life, focusing primarily on the political effects and practices of aesthetics, judgment, sensation, and family life. His books include All in the Family: On Community and Incommensurability (2013), William James: Politics in the Pluriverse (2007), and The Politics of Judgment: Aesthetics, Identity, and Political Theory (1999). He is coeditor of the seventeen-volume Roman & Littlefield series Modernity and Political Thought and of the eight-volume Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought.

His current research concerns the academic status of Native American political thought, which saw him travelling across the United States interviewing Native American academics, tribal leaders, activists, and curators. He is also a faculty mentor and co-PI with Richard Grusin in the IGHERT (Integrative Graduate Humanities
Education and Research Training) program, a Mellon-funded grant awarded to C21 (along with humanities centers at U C Santa Cruz, Australia National University, and the University of Giessen), which brings an interdisciplinary, problem-based approach to graduate training.

Read more about Kennan.