Perry Zurn

Perry Zurn is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at American University. He researches in political philosophy, gender theory, and applied ethics. Zurn is the author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming) and the co-author of Curious Minds (MIT Press, under contract). 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 (forthcoming 2020). His work appears in the APA Newsletter on LGBT Issues in Philosophy, Carceral Notebooks, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Modern and Contemporary France, philoSOPHIA, Radical Philosophy Review, and Zetesis.

Tune in to Perry Zurn’s episodes on the Choose to be Curious podcast:

• “Curiosity is Political, with Perry Zurn”
• “Curiosity Studies, with Perry Zurn”

Want to teach Perry Zurn’s Curiosity Studies chapter? Consider pairing with:

• Simone Chess, Alison Kafer, Jessi Quizar, and Mattie Udora Richardson, “Calling All Restroom Revolutionaries,” in That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, ed. Mattilda Sycamore (Soft Skull Press, 2008), 216–235.

Read and listen to more from Perry Zurn on curiosity!

• Perry Zurn and Danielle S. Bassett, “Network Architectures Supporting Learnability,” Philosophical Transactions B 375.1796 (2020).
• “Busybody, Hunter, Dancer: Three Historical Models of Curiosity,” in Toward New Philosophical Explorations of the Desire to Know: Just Curious about Curiosity, ed. Marianna Papastefanou (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2019), 26–49.
• Perry Zurn & Danielle S. Bassett, “Philosophy of Biology: Seizing an Opportunity,” Opportunity,” eLife Magazine 8:e48336 (2019): 1-5.
• “Curiosities at War: The Police and Prison Resistance after Mai '68,” Modern and Contemporary France 26.2 (2018): 179–191.
• “The Curiosity at Work in Deconstruction,” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 26.1 (2018): 84–106.
• “Puzzle Pieces: Shapes of Trans Curiosity,” APA Newsletter on LGBT Issues in Philosophy 18.1 (2018): 10–16.
• “Is Curiosity Uniquely Human?” IEEE CIS Newsletter on Cognitive and Developmental Systems 15.1 (2018).
• Perry Zurn and Danielle S. Bassett, “On Curiosity: A Fundamental Aspect of Personality, a Practice of Network Growth,” Personality Neuroscience 1.e13 (2018): 1-10.
• Danielle Bassett and Perry Zurn, “Curious Minds: From Building Knowledge Networks to Inciting Political Resistance,” Public lecture at MIT Media Lab (May 18, 2018).