Professor, Sociology
Office: STH 422
905-688-5550 x5672
[email protected]
Education:
PhD, OISE, University of Toronto (2005)
MA, York University (1998)
BA, York University (1995)
Dr. Tamari Kitossa is professor of sociology (2006 to present) and Graduate Program Director for the MA in Critical Sociology (2024 to 2027) University. He is editor and contributor to Appealing Because He Is Appalling: Black masculinities, colonialism and erotic racism (University of Alberta Press, 2021); co-editor and contributor to Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy: Teaching, learning and researching while Black (University of Toronto Press, 2022) and African Canadian Leadership: Continuity, Transition, and Transformation (University of Toronto Press, 2019).
His current research examines the impact of sexual stereotypes about Black men on their disproportionate exposure to sexual coercion and manipulation in adulthood, obfuscation of childhood sexual victimization, resilience in face of sexual trauma, and, what therapists who provide support services can tell us about effective forms of therapeutic intervention.
He is an academic freedom absolutist who believes the academic community’s defining characteristic is its openness to ideas, even ones that are unpopular. He contends that vigorous debate and peer assessment among the scholarly community – rather than the ideological imperatives of university administrators, moral entrepreneurs and politicians – is the most appropriate method to determine the merit of ideas.
- Anti-criminology and counter-colonial criminology
- Blackness/anti-Blackness
- African Canadian leadership
- Black masculinities
- Epistemology
- Interracial unions
- Ibrahim, Awad., Tamari Kitossa, Malinda Smith and Handel K. Wright (Eds.). 2022. Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy: Teaching, learning and researching while Black. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.
- Kitossa, Tamari (Eds.). 2021. Appealing Because He Is Appalling: Black masculinities, colonialism and erotic racism. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.
- Kitossa, Tamari, Erica Lawson and Philip S.S. Howard (Eds.). 2019. African Canadian Leadership: Continuity, Transition, and Transformation (University of Toronto Press) with Erica Lawson and Philip S.S. Howard. The second is the forthcoming book.
- Schöpf, Caroline M., Justin Felip D. Daduya, Tamari Kitossa, Bandana Purkayastha and Matthew M. Chew. 2025. Decolonizing Epistemologies—Introduction to the Special Issue. In Schöpf, Caroline M., Tamari Kitossa, Matthew M. Chew (Eds.), Special Issue: Decolonizing Epistemology: Intellectual Imperialism and the Coloniality of Knowledge. Third World Quarterly.
- Kitossa, Tamari. 2025. Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Academic Freedom. Society for Academic Freedom, 100: 11.
- Kitossa, Tamari. 2023. Mis-education of the Critical Criminologist: Theory, meta-curriculum of onto-epistemology and the myth decolonization. In C. Cunneen, A. Deckert, A. Porter, J. Tauri, and R. Webb (Eds.), Routledge Handbook on Decolonizing Justice. London: Routledge.
- Kitossa, Tamari and Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz. 2022. Anti-Blackness, Criminology and the University as Violence Work: Diversity as Ritual and the Professionalization of Repression in Canada. In D.M.D. Silva and M. Deflem (Eds.), Diversity in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies. Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance, Volume 27. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
- Sanchez, Phoebe and Tamari Kitossa. 2022. The Neo-Colonial State as Racketeer: The Filipino state, the war for drugs and paradoxical damage. Philippines Sociological Review, 69: 157-170.
