Kevin Anderson

Kevin Anderson
Distinguished Professor
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Office Location

SSMS 3131

Specialization

Social and political theory, history of social thought, Africa and the Middle East, Sociology and Politics of Crime and Law

Education

Ph.D., City University of New York Graduate Center

Bio

I grew up in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area and attended Trinity College, Hartford, during which time I became active in the social justice movements of the late 1960s, like Students for a Democratic Society, Hartford’s Other Voice, and the Black Panther Defense Committee. In the 1970s, I became a Marxist-Humanist and a scholar-activist, which is when I drove a taxi for five years.

I received a PhD in Sociology from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1983. I lived in the Chicago area for 25 years, during which time I taught at Northern Illinois and Purdue Universities and served as Literary Agent for the Estate of Raya Dunayevskaya. Since 2009, I have been teaching in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with affiliations to the Departments of Political Science, Feminist Studies, and Global Studies. Since 2009, I have also been active in social justice movements in the Los Angeles area, where I work with the International Marxist-Humanist Organization.

I have held fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. My books include Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (University of Chicago Press, 2010/2016-also French-Japanese-Turkish-Persian-Arabic-Portuguese), Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (with Janet Afary, University of Chicago Press, 2005- also Turkish-Portuguese), and Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism (University of Illinois Press, 1995- also Chinese-Turkish-Japanese). I and my partner Janet Afary, a scholar of Iran and feminism, have been together since 1985.

Courses

Undergraduate

SOC 185M-Social Theory-Marxist and Critical Theory

SOC 185A-Development of Social Thought

SOC130A-Sociology of Development-Africa

SOC 130M-Sociology of Globalization-Middle East

Graduate

SOC 207A, 207B-Sociological Theory

SOC 232-Marx Seminar