Kevin Richards

Dr. Kevin Richards is Professor and Chair of Graduate Programs at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He holds a Ph.D. (1995) and MA (1992) from Bryn Mawr College and a BA with honors from the University of California-Berkeley (1989). He is an artist, experimental musician, critic, curator, art historian, and theoretician specializing in the work of Jacques Derrida. His other areas of expertise include 19th-century art and aesthetics, contemporary art, French theory, and film history.  Amongst his publications are Proximate Difference in Aesthetics: Jacques Derrida and Institutional Critique (Lexington: Lexington Books, 2023), “eXistenZ or Existenz: Transcendence in the Early 21st century,” in Transcendence and Film: Cinematic Encounters with the Real, edited by David P. Nichols (Lexington: Lexington Books, 2019), “Mal pointure or If the Shoe Doesn't Fit…,” in Van Gogh among the Philosophers: Painting, Thinking, Being, edited by David P. Nichols (Lexington: Lexington Books, 2017), Derrida Reframed: A Guide for the Visual Arts Student (London: I.B. Tauris Publications, 2008) and "Eve's Dropping/Eavesdropping," in The Writings of Michael Fried, edited by Jill Beaulieu, Mary Roberts, and Toni Ross (Sydney: Power Publications, 2000).  He has also been a regular contributor and editor of The American Book Review.