Introduction to section from the 12th Annual Foucault Circle Conference

Devonya N. Havis grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, earned a degree in religion from Williams College and a Ph.D., with distinction, in Philosophy at Boston College. Her numerous jobs have included a stint as a press aide to a Boston City Councilor and service as a staff reporter for the Bay State Banner, a Boston-based news weekly. She has taught courses in Ethics, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Critical Philosophy of Race, and Black Philosophy at Boston College, Harvard University, and Virginia Union University. Currently an associate professor of philosophy at Canisius College, in Buffalo, NY, Havis teaches philosophy courses that range from introduction to traditional Western philosophical concepts to explorations of Hip-Hop theory and its political implications. Her writings include “Blackness Beyond Witness” in Philosophy and Social Criticism, and “Seeing Black” through Michel Foucault’s Eyes: “Stand Your Ground” Laws As An Anchorage Point for State-Sponsored Racism”, a chapter in Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics.

Richard A. Lynch (Ph.D., Boston College) an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at DePauw University, organized and coordinated the Foucault Circle for its first decade.  His first book, Foucault's Critical Ethics, will appear with Fordham University Press in 2015.  He has also published on Hegel, Habermas, Lacan, Bakhtin, and others, and is currently at work on a book project bridging Foucauldian and feminist ethics of care.  His previous translations include other essays by Foucault and others, as well as Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel's The Death of Philosophy: Reference and Self-Reference in Contemporary Thought (Columbia University Press, 2011).