Robert Gooding-Williams (Ph.D., Yale, 1982) is the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor of Political Science and the College. He is also a Faculty Associate of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory and an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. His areas of interest include Du Bois, Critical Race Theory, the History of African-American Political Thought, 19th Century German Philosophy (especially Nietzsche), Existentialism, and Aesthetics (including literature and philosophy, representations of race in film, and the literary theory and criticism of African-American literature). Before coming to the University of Chicago he taught at Northwestern University (1998-2005), where he was Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities (2003-2005), Adjunct Professor of African American Studies, and an affiliate of the Program in Critical Theory. Before coming to Northwestern he taught at Amherst College (1988-98), where he was Professor of Black Studies and the George Lyman Crosby 1896 Professor of Philosophy, and at Simmons College (1983-88), where he taught philosophy and directed the program in Afro-American Studies.