ANDERSON, Kevin B. 1948-
(Kevin Anderson)

PERSONAL:

Born 1948. Education: Trinity College, B.A., 1970; Queens College, M.A., 1980; City University of New York, Ph.D., 1983.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Purdue University, Department of Political Science, BRNG 2255, 100 N. University St., West Lafayette, IN 47907. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, assistant professor of sociology, 1985-2002; Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, associate professor of political science and affiliate associate professor of sociology and women's studies, 2002—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Received grants from the German Academic Exchange Service, 1994, American Philosophical Society, 1996, American Council of Learned Societies one-year fellowship, 1996, and National Endowment for the Humanities, 2001-07; International Erich Fromm Prize, Fromm Society, 2000, for Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the Punitive Society; Center for Humanistic Studies fellowship, Purdue University, 2004.

WRITINGS:

(As Kevin Anderson) Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1

(With Janet Afary) Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2005.

EDITOR

(As Kevin Anderson; with Eric A. Plaut; translator, with Plaut and Gabrielle Edgcomb) Marx on Suicide, introduction by Anderson and Plaut, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1999.

(As Kevin Anderson; with Richard Quinney; translator, with Heinze D. Osterle) Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the Punitive Society, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 2000.

(With Peter Hudis) Raya Dunayevskaya, The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx, Lexington Books (Lanham, MD), 2002.

(With Peter Hudis) Rosa Luxemburg, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, Monthly Review Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to books, including Rosa Luxemburg Aujourd'hui, edited by Claudie Weill and Gilbert Badia, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes (Paris, France), 1986; and Criminology As Peacemaking, edited by Richard Quinney and Hal Pepinsky, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1991. Contributor to periodicals, including New Politics, Sociological Quarterly, Justice Quarterly, World Affairs, Science & Society, Sociological Theory, Humanity and Society: Journal of the Association for Humanist Sociology, Review of Radical Political Economics, and Journal of Political and Military Sociology.

SIDELIGHTS:

Kevin B. Anderson is an associate professor of political science whose research focuses on political and social theory. In 2002 Anderson coedited Raya Dunayevskaya's The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx with Peter Hudis. Anderson and Hudis selected essays, articles, lectures and unpublished letters to present the process of Dunayevskaya's thinking. "The selections represent her range of styles and her ability to address many different audiences," observed Patricia A. Johnson in the Review of Metaphysics. Johnson also felt that "this volume provides an opportunity for thinking … about issues that remain important for the twenty-first century." Finally, Johnson called the book "an excellent introduction" to Dunayevskaya.

Anderson published Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism in 2005. The book, which was written with Janet Afary, discusses French philosopher Michel Foucault's support of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, during which the monarchy under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was overthrown. The Iranian revolutionaries were opposed to cultural modernization and Westernization. The authors detail Foucault's travels to Iran and analyze his subsequent writings on the country. Many reviewers appreciated Afary and Anderson's novel approach. Murat Yildiz, writing in the Middle East Journal, called the book "an insightful look at how Foucault's experiences in Iran influenced his ideas." Additionally, Library Journal critic Sadiq Alkoriji pointed out that the analysis of Foucault's writings "sheds light on a presumed resistance to the material body of the West," concluding that Foucault and the Iranian Revolution is "insightful."

Anderson discussed Foucault and the Iranian Revolution in an interview posted on the Purdue UniversityWeb site. Anderson commented: "A quarter of a century later, … the issues argued about in 1978 and 1979 are still part of the discussion today." He continued, "Since 9/11 there has been a much larger discussion about how to respond to radical Islamism, and that's why it's important to read and understand Foucault's writings on the events that first attracted the Western world's attention to radical Islamism."

Anderson told CA: "I became interested in writing in the 1970s, as part of ongoing debates over the relationship of radical philosophy and social theory to the social movements of the time. Even today, much of my work is aimed at an audience larger than that of academia alone—antiglobalization activists, for example. I have been strongly influenced by G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Max Weber, V.I. Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Frantz Fanon, Michael Foucault, and Raya Dunayevskaya."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, April 15, 2005, Sadiq Alkoriji, review of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism, p. 90.

Middle East Journal, autumn, 2005, Murat Yildiz, review of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, p. 701.

Review of Metaphysics, September, 2003, Patricia A. Johnson, review of The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx, p. 143.

ONLINE

Boston Globe Web site,http://www.boston.com/ (June 12, 2005), Wesley Yang, review of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution.

Purdue University Web site,http://www.purdue.edu/ (July 8, 2005), Amy Patterson Neubert, "New Book on Philosopher Foucault's Support for Radical Islamism"; (June 8, 2006), author's curriculum vitae.