Devonya Havis

Devonya Havis is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY. She earned her PhD in Philosophy from Boston College and her BA in Religion from Williams College. Her scholarly engagements utilize insights from Michel Foucault as a means of exploring issues in critical philosophy of race, critical disability studies, and phenomenology. Her publications include: “‘Now, How You Sound’: Considering a Different Philosophical Praxis” in Hypatia (2014); “Managing Individuals and Populations through Psychiatric Classification” in Serife Tekin and Robyn Bluhm, eds., The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Psychiatry (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019); “Blackness Beyond Witness: Black Vernacular Phenomena and Auditory Identity” in Philosophy and Social Criticism (2009); and “‘Seeing Black’ through Michel Foucault’s Eyes: ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws as An Anchorage Point for State-Sponsored Racism,” in Janine Jones and George Yancy, eds., Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). She is also a contributor to Jennifer Scuro, ed., Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Questions via Disability Studies (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

Havis has a forthcoming book, Creating a Black Vernacular Philosophy. She teaches to promote social justice, an interest that is especially evident in the Immersion East Side (Buffalo, NY) Ignatian Seminar that she has co-designed and co-directed for the last six years.