New Faculty in Philosophy

Two scholars with very different areas of expertise joined NC State’s continuing faculty in philosophy in August 2017.

Stephen C. Ferguson II (Ph.D., Kansas, 2004) was appointed as an associate professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies. Ferguson comes to NC State from the Department of Liberal Studies at North Carolina A&T State University.

A specialist in Africana philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of race and philosophy of sport, Ferguson is the author of Philosophy of African American Studies: Nothing Left of Blackness (Palgrave, 2015). His other publications include a co-authored book, two co-edited books and over fifteen scholarly articles. With John H. McClendon, he is currently writing a book entitled African American Philosophers and Philosophy: An Introduction to the History, Concepts and Contemporary Issues for Bloomsbury. He also serves as co-editor of the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience.

While Ferguson is based in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, half of his teaching will be in the Africana Studies program, which is based in the division of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. In Philosophy, Ferguson will be introducing new courses in the philosophy of race and Africana political philosophy.

Kevin Richardson, who has just completed the Ph.D. in Philosophy at MIT, was appointed as an assistant professor of Philosophy. Richardson was born in North Carolina and went to college at UNC Chapel Hill, where he majored in Philosophy. As a graduate student at MIT, he was active in the development of programs that promote diversity in philosophy.

Richardson is a specialist in metaphysics, philosophy of language and pragmatism. He is especially interested in the broad categories that we use to structure the world around us and in how language users construct linguistic meaning. His Ph.D. dissertation, Grounding Pluralism, defends a pragmatic and pluralistic account of the metaphysical relation of grounding. His current research explores the way that language is used as a tool for social expression.

Richardson will be teaching courses on the philosophy of language, logic and related fields in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.