Rate My Professor Roger Kurtz

J. Roger Kurtz is Professor of English and Head of the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University. He earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Iowa in 1994 and a BA in English, Spanish, and Secondary Education from Eastern Mennonite University in 1985. His career includes positions at SUNY Brockport, where he was Professor of English from 2006 to 2017, Associate Professor from 2000 to 2006, and Assistant Professor from 1997 to 2000; he also chaired the Department of English from 2009 to 2012, the Department of African and African American Studies from 2012 to 2017, and served as Interim Chair of the Department of Anthropology from 2012 to 2014. Earlier, he was Assistant Professor of English and Philosophy at Idaho State University from 1994 to 1997 and Teaching Assistant at the University of Iowa from 1988 to 1994. Kurtz is a comparatist specializing in postcolonial literatures with an emphasis on East African literature and culture, particularly the region's early nationalist period, liberation movements, trauma theory, and world literatures. In Literature, his scholarship addresses topics from Joseph Conrad's influence on Singaporean novelists to Kenyan urban spaces and contemporary trauma theory.

Kurtz has authored key books including Trauma and Transformation in African Literature (Routledge, 2021), Trauma and Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Nyarloka’s Gift: The Writing of Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye (Mvule Africa Publishers, 2005), and Urban Obsessions, Urban Fears: The Postcolonial Kenyan Novel (James Currey/Africa World Press, 1998). His articles appear in journals such as Research in African Literatures, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, ARIEL, Journal of African Cultural Studies, Conradiana, and Journal of Commonwealth Literature. He has received two Fulbright Fellowships (Kenya, 1992-1993 and 2006-2007; Ethiopia), two National Endowment for the Humanities grants, the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2003), the SUNY Brockport Honors Program Outstanding Teacher Award (2002), and the University of Iowa Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (1990), among other honors. Kurtz's contributions influence postcolonial and African literary studies through his explorations of trauma, moral imagination, and cultural politics.