Mark Christian Thompson is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor and Professor of English. His research and teaching concentrate in African American literature and philosophy, twentieth-century German philosophy, Kafka, the philosophy of race, and jazz studies. He is the author of five books: Black Fascisms: African American Literature and Culture between the Wars (2007); Kafka’s Blues: Figurations of Racial Blackness in the Construction of an Aesthetic (2016); Anti-Music: Jazz and Racial Blackness in German Thought between the Wars (2019); Phenomenal Blackness: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory (2022); and The Critique of Nonviolence: Martin Luther King, Jr., and Philosophy (2022).

“What Will Be African-American Literature?” American Literary History (Winter 2013) 25 (4): 958-966.

“The Negro Who Disappeared: Race in Kafka’s Amerika.” Violence, Aesthetics, Culture: Germany, 1789-1938. Eds. Carl Niekerk and Stefani Engelstein. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2011. 183-198.

“Aesthetic Hygiene: W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and the Work of Art.” The Blackwell Companion to African American Literature. Ed. Gene Jarrett. New York: Blackwell, 2010. 244-253.

“A Response to Xiomara Santamarina.” American Literary History 20.1-2 (Spring-Summer 2008): 317-320.

“Voodoo Fascism: Fascist Ideology in Arna Bontemps’ Drums at Dusk.” MELUS 30.3 (Fall 2005): 155-178.

“The Way Out: The Slave Narrative in Kafka's Ein Bericht für eine Akademie,” Invited Lecture, New York University, Prague, 3/14.

“Ape Autobiography: On Kafka's Ein Bericht für eine Akademie as a Slave Narrative,” Invited Lecture, Symposium: “Blackness, Germany, and the Concept of Race,” UCLA, 4/12.

“Being Beloved: Morrison, Heidegger, and Black Anti-Humanism,” Invited Lecture, Americanist Colloquium Series, Yale University, 12/09.

“The Apostles of Beauty: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Aesthetics of Double Consciousness,” Invited Lecture, Brown University, 01/09.

“The Apostles of Beauty: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Aesthetics of Double Consciousness,” Invited Lecture, The Johns Hopkins University, 01/09.

“The Critique of Nonviolence: Benjamin, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Sovereignty,” Invited Lecture, Brown University, 08/08.

“The Critique of Nonviolence: Benjamin, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Sovereignty,” Invited Lecture, The Institute for American Studies, Rome, Italy, 04/08.

“Jazz: The Music of Fascism: On Adorno and His Negroes,” Friedrich-Alexander University, Invited Lecture, Erlangen, Germany, 03/08.

“The Black Arts and Black Neofascism,” Invited Lecture, The University of California, Santa Barbara, 01/07.

“The Sun Also Races: Hemingway’s Blackness,” Invited Lecture, The University of California, Irvine, 12/06.

“Performing Revolution: The Black Aesthetic as Insurgence,” Invited Panelist, New Directions in African American Theory and Criticism Conference, Indiana University, 04/06

“Black Fascisms,” States of Welfare: A Mellon Foundation Conference, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 03/06

"The Negro Who Disappeared: Race in Kafka's Amerika," Violence in German Literature, Culture and Intellectual History, 1789-1938, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 10/05

"The Negro Who Disappeared: Race in Kafka's Amerika," Die Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 02/05

“Jazz: The Music of Fascism: On Adorno and His Negroes,” Invited Panelist, The Frankfurt School Today, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 04/04

“Jealous Rebels: Fascism in The Outsider, Invited Panelist, New Directions in African American Theory and Criticism Conference, Indiana University, 04/04

“The Myth of Marcus Garvey.” Invited Speaker, Harvard University, 01/04

“The Sufi.” Invited Speaker, Vassar College, 01/04

“My Own Private Ethiopia: Ethiopianism and Classical Black Nationalism in The Souls of Black Folk.” Modern Language Association Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, 12/03

“The Possessed Island: African-American Cultural Appropriations of Post-Occupation Haiti.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, 11/03

“‘In Turban and Gorgeous Robe’”: Claude McKay, Black Labor and Fascism in 1930s Harlem.” American Studies Association Annual Conference, Hartford, CT, 10/03

“The Myth of Marcus Garvey: Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and Fascist Ideology.” New Directions in African American
Theory, Criticism and Cultural Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 4/03

“The God of Love: Fascism and Melodrama in George S. Schuyler’s Black Empire.” Guest Speaker, University of California, Los Angeles, 2/03

“Distant Drums: Voodoo, Fascism and Haitian Revolution in Arna Bontemps, Drums at Dusk.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Conference, 11/02

“The Death Continent: Blood-Sacrifice and Authoritarian Rule in D.H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent.” Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Annual Conference, 10/02

“Killing Coons: The Scapegoating of African America in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Guest Speaker, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2/01

“National Socialism and Blood-Sacrifice in Zora Neale Hurston's Moses, Man of the Mountain.” African American Review 38.3 (2004): 395-415.

“The God of Love: Fascism in George S. Schuyler's Black Empire.” CLA Journal 48.2 (Dec. 2004): 183-99.

“Hamid, Sufi Abdul,” Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. 2 vols. Eds. Cary D. Wintzand Paul Finkelman. New York: Routledge, 2004. 459-460.