Travis Holloway

Travis Holloway, M.F.A., Ph.D., is Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, a poet, and a former Goldwater Fellow in Creative Writing at NYU. He is the 2023-2024 recipient of Pratt’s Research Recognition Award, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Institute.

Prof. Holloway is the author of How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art, and Politics for the Anthropocene (Stanford, 2022); co-translator of three books and several articles by the French political philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, including Corpus III (Fordham, 2023), The Possibility of a World (Fordham, 2017), and What’s These Worlds Coming To? (Fordham, 2014); and co-author of Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action that Changed America (OR Books, 2011). He is currently working on two subsequent monographs: How to Perform a Democracy; and How to Assemble with All the Living. He is also editing a special issue of Philosophy Today on philosophy in a new era of climate change.

Holloway grew up queer and working-class in a rural factory town affected by free trade and globalization. A first-generation college student, he completed his graduate studies in philosophy on a Fulbright dissertation fellowship and a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Fellowship at the Universität Freiburg in Germany, and as a visiting researcher at the Sorbonne and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. Separately and during this time, Holloway earned an MFA in creative writing (poetry) at NYU, where he studied with the poets Anne Carson, Yusef Komunyakaa, John Ashbery, Charles Simic, and Marie Howe. His unpublished poetry manuscript, It Was Up to Us, was a finalist for two national poetry awards.

Holloway has held positions or taught at Vassar College, NYU, the Pratt Institute, SUNY Farmingdale, and SUNY Stony Brook. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the DAAD, the Andrew Mellon foundation, and the Max Kade Institute. His most recent work has been published in Italy, Turkey, the UK, Columbia, Canada, the Czech Republic, and the U.S. His primary interests include contemporary Continental philosophy, social and political philosophy, environmental philosophy, aesthetics, and queer theory. Some of his recent articles include “The Meaning of Climate Change: Dipesh Chakrabarty with Travis Holloway” (Philosophy Today, Forthcoming 2024), “Weather” (The Philosopher, Special Issue on the Planet, 2022), “Philosophy at the End of the World: For a Counterhistory of Human Beings in the Anthropocene” (The Philosopher, 2020), “A Strategy for a Democratic Future” (Tropos, 2019), “Neoliberalism and the Future of Democracy” (Philosophy Today, 2018), and “How to Perform a Democracy” (Epoché, 2017).

At Pratt, Prof. Holloway especially enjoys having conversations with students and faculty about the relationship between theory and creative practice.

Ph.D. SUNY Stony Brook (Presidential Fellowship); M.F.A. New York University (Goldwater Fellowship); Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Fulbright Dissertation Fellowship; DAAD Fellowship); L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Chercheur invité); M.A., Boston College (Full Tuition Scholarship; GSAS School Award); B.A., Belmont University (Full Scholarship)