Kevin M. Hickey, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
Department of Humanities and Communication
Tel: (518) 694-7359
E-mail: kevin.hickey@acphs.edu

Education  

• Ph.D. in English, State University of New York at Albany

Courses Taught at ACPHS

• > Principles of Communication 
• > Humanities I: Ancient Times to the Renaissance 
• > Humanities II: The Renaissance to the 19th Century 
• > Humanities III: The 19th Century to the Present 
• > Humanities 201: The Contemporary World 
• > Health Care and Human Values 
• > The Drama 
• > Travel in Literature and Image 
• > African American Literature and Music 
• > Caribbean Literature and Music 
• > African Literature, Film, and Music 
• > Culture and Customs of Senegal  

Research Interests

• My research on “geography” in literature falls into three interconnecting categories. First, I research places called, for instance, Africa, Jamaica, colony. Second, I research literature that depicts “foreign lands” using ideas such as “the dark continent,” “exile,” “tourist,” or “at home.” Third, I research the “imagined geographies” of Western philosophy especially of metaphysics and in particular Kant’s "Critique of Judgment" to analyze tropes of travel, geography, and conquest. My research shows how these tropes work to create and sustain ideas that support (and in some ways disrupt) Eurocentric and imperial perceptions of the world. Most importantly, I study how Africana writers use these same tropes to reconfigure “inherited conceptions” of space and the hierarchies embedded in those conceptions.

Selected Publications

• “Africa and Travel Writing.” New Directions in Travel Writing and Travel Studies (Comparative Culture, Media, and Communication Studies Series). Carmen Andras, editor. Aachen: Shaker Publishing GmbH, 2010. 103-118.
  
  “`Exiles Must Make Their Own Maps’: Space, Teleology, and Derek Walcott.” International Journal of the Humanities. Vol. 6.7 (2008), pages 85-96.
  
  “Furrowing Africa’s Killing Fields.” The International Journal of the Humanities. Vol. 4.5 (2006), pages 101-109. 
  
  “Subject to Colonialism: African Self-Fashioning and the Colonial Library.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 6.1 (2004), pages 135-136.  

Noteworthy

• > Annual ACPHS Africana Film Series Coordinator 
• > Image-Film: "Four Years Across Africa by Bike"
• > Annual Pharm.D. Rotation in Basel, Switzerland Coordinator 
• > Study Abroad Course in Senegal Professor  
• > Medical Mission to Belize Professor 
• > New York African Studies Association Vice President