Black History Month Lecture 2025

Upcoming and past events in the School of Divinity or led by our academics

School of Divinity

Join us for the School of Divinity Black History Month Lecture 2025 with speaker Prof Tommy J. Curry

Martin Hall, New College, The University of Edinburgh

Under-MAN: Fanon and Frazier on the Phobo-genetic Expression of Evil as NihilityContemporary social psychology has improved upon early 20th psychoanalytic accounts of racism and threat construction. Contrary to contemporary intersectional theory, which posits racial maleness as a prototypical and privileged social identity, numerous social psychological studies have found that maleness is the primary designator of outgroup identification among racial groups. Said differently, racial animus is generated from the construction of racialized men as biological, sexual, and cultural threats to racial groups, specifically the women of the dominant racial group. E.Franklin Frazier and Frantz Fanon understood that the Black man ignited insanity within the white men and women, because the Black man was a demonological entity. This paper explores the role evil has in designating Non-Being in the work of Fanon and Frazier through the concept of the Man-Not. Professor Tommy. J CurryTommy J. Curry is a Professor of Philosophy and holds a Personal Chair of Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He is the first Black person to be named a Professor of Philosophy in Scotland and in the long history of the University of Edinburgh which was founded in 1583. He is the co-chair of the Research and Engagement Working Group that has been commissioned by the principal of the University of Edinburgh to investigate the legacies of colonialism and slavery and the co-author of the Decolonizing Transformations Report (2025). Professor Curry is the author of The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press 2017), which won the 2018 American Book Award, as well as the author of Another white Man’s Burden: Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy of Racial Empire (SUNY Press 2018), which won the 2020 Josiah Royce Prize in American Idealist Thought. His research explores anti-Black racism, anti-colonial resistance, and the sexual vulnerability of Black males throughout Western societies. Prof. Curry has been recognized for his public intellectual work winning the Alain Locke Award for Public Philosophy in 2017, as well as being recognized as among the top 15 Emerging Scholars in the United States that same year. <h4>Venue information</h4>In line with fire safety regulations attendees using a wheelchair must be able to self-transfer to an evac chair in order to safely evacuate the building.This venue is fully accessible however, if you require disabled access, please email <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/professor-hannah-holtschneiders-inaugural-lecture-tickets-1110084295009?aff=oddtdtcreator&_gl=1%2Axqxkcz%2A_up%2AMQ..%2A_ga%2AMjg4MTU0NjQ0LjE3MzYzNTMwODY.%2A_ga_TQVES5V6SH%2AMTczNjM1MzA4NS4xLjAuMTczNjM1MzA4NS4wLjAuMA.." title="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/professor-hannah-holtschneiders-inaugural-lecture-tickets-1110084295009?aff=oddtdtcreator&_gl=1%2Axqxkcz%2A_up%2AMQ..%2A_ga%2AMjg4MTU0NjQ0LjE3MzYzNTMwODY.%2A_ga_TQVES5V6SH%2AMTczNjM1MzA4NS4xLjAuMTczNjM1MzA4NS4wLjAuMA..">pippa.innes@ed.ac.uk</a> so that we can ensure we accommodate this.