Biography
Perry Zurn is Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University, and affiliate faculty in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies. Zurn will be a Society Fellow at Cornell University in '23-‘24 and a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania in ‘24-‘25. He researches primarily in political philosophy, critical theory, and transgender studies, and collaborates in psychology and network neuroscience. He is the author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry (2021) and the co-author of Curious Minds: The Power of Connection (2022). He is also the co-editor of Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition (2016), Carceral Notebooks 12 (2017), Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (2020) and Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group, 1970-1980 (2021). Zurn is currently at work on a new monograph, How We Make Each Other: Trans Poetics at the Edge of the University (under contract, Duke University Press), and co-editing Trans Philosophy: Meaning and Mattering (under review). Zurn is the author or coauthor of 75+ additional publications in philosophy, political theory, trans studies, and network science and has given 150+ talks at local, national, and international venues. Zurn’s work has been featured in 50+ podcast, radio, and television shows, as well as in mainstream news outlets such as The Guardian. His work has been generously funded by the American Philosophical Association, the Center for Curiosity, the Hypatia Diversity Fund, the Lee Somers Fund, and the Mellon Foundation. Zurn’s previous appointments include Research Associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Curiosity in the School of Social Policy and Practice.
Featured Discussion (2023) | Curious About Curiosity
