The department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGS) is composed of administrators, a Program Advisory Committee (PAC) and Teaching Faculty.

WGS Administrators oversee planning, programming, and day-to-day operations.

The WGS Program Advisory Committee (PAC) is made up of faculty and staff who consult on curricular matters, choose scholarship and award winners, and advise on vision and programming.

The WGS Teaching Faculty includes numerous faculty members (from several colleges at UAH) who teach classes designated as Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies courses.

 

Dr. John Harfouch

Associate Professor,
Pre-Law Advisor, Philosophy

Contact

1310 Ben Graves Drive
Morton Hall
Room 222
Huntsville, AL 35899
Campus Map

256.824.2337
jen0005@uah.edu

Biography

Dr. Harfouch studies the history of philosophy from 1600 to the present. His 2018 book, Another Mind-Body Problem: A History of Racial Non-Being, presents a counter-history of human subjectivity in the Modern period tracing the development of race and racism through the discourse on minds and bodies. He has also written extensively on imperialism, colonialism, and orientalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His current research program focuses on Palestinian philosopher, Fayez Sayegh, who developed a unique philosophical method to advocate for justice in the Middle East. At UAH, Dr. Harfouch often teaches classes in ethics, history, and political philosophy. He is also the director of UAH’s pre-law certificate.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

  • Ph.D., Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, 2011
  • M.A., Philosophy, University of Memphis, 2008
  • B.A., Philosophy, The George Washington University, 2003

Honors & Awards

  • Faculty Research Grant, University of Alabama-Huntsville, 2022
  • Faculty Research Grant, University of Alabama-Huntsville, 2022
  • New Faculty Research Grant, University of Alabama-Huntsville, 2017-2018

Expertise

  • Critical Race Theory
  • 19th and 20th Century Continental Philosophy
  • Social and Political Philosophy
  • History of Philosophy

Recent Publications

  • “Power in/and the University: An Interview with Philosophy Today” Philosophy Today 67 (1):207-222 (2023)

  • “Diversity and Slavery in Modern Philosophy: A Productive Contradiction.” Forthcoming in Within/Against: Philosophical Interventions in Neoliberal Higher Education.

  • “‘Beyond that which the Victim Suffers in Death Alone: Pain, Orientalism, and Non-Violence at Guantanamo Bay.” Sociology of Islam. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1163/22131418-09030001

  • “Anticolonial Middle Eastern and North African Thought: A Philosopher’s Introduction” (Accepted with revisions at Critical Philosophy of Race)

  • “A Subaltern Pain: The Problem of Violence in Philosophy’s Pain Discourse.” Eidos: A Journal for Philosophy of Culture. vol. 3, no. 3, 2019, pp. 127-144.

  • Another Mind-Body Problem: A History of Racial Non-Being (SUNY Press, 2018) Reviewed in Choice Magazine, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Hypatia, Journal of the History of Philosophy

  • “Does Leibniz Have Any Role in the History of Racism?” Philosophy Today. vol. 61, no. 3, 2017, pp. 737-755.

  • “The Arab That Cannot Be Killed: Orientalism’s Genocidal Logic.” Radical Philosophy Review. vol. 20, no. 2, 2017, pp. 219-241.

  • “Kant’s Racial Mind-Body Unions.” Continental Philosophy Review. vol. 48, 2015, pp. 41-58.

  • “Descartes on the Disposition of the Blood and the Substantial Union of Mind and Body.” Studia UBB Philosophia: Descartes’ Scientific and Philosophical Disputes with his Contemporaries. vol. 58, no. 3, 2014, pp. 109.124.