Michael Kelly

Research Interests:

Michael Kelly is a Professor of Philosophy specializing in aesthetics in combination with critical theory, political theory, and ethics. He is author of A Hunger for Aesthetics: Enacting the Demands of Art (Columbia University Press, 2012; paperback 2017) and Iconoclasm in Aesthetics (Cambridge University Press, 2003); and he’s Editor-in Chief of the six-volume Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2014, 2nd edition). Kelly is also the Founder and President of the Transdisciplinary Aesthetics Foundation, which has organized nine Questioning Aesthetics Symposia in four countries over the last four years: https://transaestheticsfoundation.org/

He is currently co-editing (with Professor Monique Roelofs) an anthology on Black Aesthetics, which includes contributions by as many artists as philosophers; and he’s also writing on other contemporary examples of transdisciplinary aesthetics (e.g., social-practice art).

Kelly’s teaching includes Aesthetics, Critical Theory (from Adorno to Butler), Nietzsche, contemporary European philosophy (Foucault, Habermas), 20th Century Philosophy, Philosophical Methods, and Ancient Philosophy.