The School of Public Policy Speaker Series welcomes Perry Zurn, assistant professor of philosophy at American University. He will present on the topic "curiosity as strategy and as tactic," followed by 30-45 minutes of Q&A.

Zoom link

Description of the talk:

What does curiosity do? What is it (good) for? And for whom and for what does it matter? Drawing on resources as diverse as critical theory and network science, Zurn analyzes the socio-political function of inquisitive affects and investigative practices.

About the speaker:

Perry Zurn is assistant professor of philosophy at American University. A political philosopher, Zurn studies forces and histories of change, focusing on the power of curiosity, political resistance, and transgender life. He is the author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry (2021) and the co-author of Curious Minds (MIT Press, forthcoming 2022). He is also the co-editor of Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition (2016), Carceral Notebooks 12 (2017), Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (2020), and Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group, 1970-1980 (2021). He is currently at work on two new monographs: one on the poetics of transgender activism and another on the philosophy of movement.