- Associate Professor, Advisor
- Philosophy: Swan 149
- Email: james_haile@uri.edu
- Office Location: Dept of Philosophy
Swan Hall
Kingston, RI 02881
Biography
Dr. Haile’s research and teaching interests intersect recent Continental philosophy (especially Aesthetics), Philosophy and/of Literature, Philosophy of Place, Africana Philosophy, and Philosophy and/of Race. Specifically, he is interested in the intersection of 20th century American and African America Literature and Existentialism. James was named the URI Philosophy Ebbs Fellow for 2024-2026, and he was a recipient of the 2022 College of Arts and Sciences Research Excellence Award.
Research
Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison (esp their writings on place and nature), Jean-Paul Sartre (esp his writings on jazz), James Baldwin (esp his writings on language and religion), black aesthetics (esp contemporary genre aesthetics of hip hop).
Education
- Ph.D. Duquesne University, 2014
- M.A. University of Memphis, 2008
- B.A. Morehouse College, 2002
Selected Publications
Selected Academic Scholarship
The Buck, the Black, and the Existential Hero (Northwestern UP, 2020) https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810141650/the-buck-the-black-and-the-existential-hero/
The Dark Delight of Being Strange (Columbia UP, 2024) https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-dark-delight-of-being-strange/9780231216302
Philosophical Meditations on Richard Wright (Lexington Press)
Thinking through Baldwin, edited collection (forthcoming)
“Afro-‘American’ Writing: Motifs of Place” (published in Philosophizing the Americas: An Inter-American Discourse (Fordham University Press)
Richard Wright: The ‘Nature’ of Politics, The ‘Politics’ of Nature (published in A Political Companion to Richard Wright, University of Kentucky Press)
Selected Public Scholarship
“The ‘Gift’ of Black Art.” Bloomsbury Contemporary Aesthetics Case Studies (April 2023) https://www.bloomsburyphilosophylibrary.com/custom-browse?docid=BloomsburyContemporaryAestheticsCaseStudies
“Thelonious.” APA Studies on Philosophy and the Black Experience (formerly APA Newsletters) Vol. 23, no. 2 (Spring 2024) https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.apaonline.org/resource/collection/950518C1-3421-484C-8153-CDA6ED737182/BlackExperienceV23n2.pdf