Jon Ivan Gill engages philosophy as not merely the practice of thought about the nature of things but also (and perhaps more importantly) how we live into and intensify our understanding of the nature of things through experience. From the Hip-Hop shows scattered throughout the Chicago to LA underground to silence on a train in Ciudad de México, Jon Ivan delves into the fabric of what the universe makes evident about that which we consider most important. As Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus Adolphus College, he explores with students the center and the fringes of the discipline as it has been traditionally taught in the “West,” asking why its borders have been so narrow and how we can be more attuned to the practice of philosophy in realms where we haven’t been trained to expect it.

Ivan is the author of Underground Rap as Religion: A Theopoetic Examination of a Process Aesthetic Religion (2019 hardcover; 2021 papreback), where he argues using Whiteheadian process philosophy that underground rap creates global communities of meaning that are centers of significance, providing by manufacture foundational meaning, guidance, and ethics for life. The text was released in the Routledge Studies in Hip-Hop and Religion series, edited by Monica R. Miller and Anthony B. Pinn.

Jon also edited the volume Toward Afro-diasporic and Afrofuturist Philosophies of Religion (2022 paperback and hardcover), a collection of papers from his students from a class in the Religious Studies department at Pomona College (Claremont, CA) bearing the same name. Hosting a provocative forward from prominent Afrofuturist writer Ytasha Womack, the text features students attempting to redefine philosophy of religion in such a way that the aesthetic and cultural productions of the residents and descendants of the region we now refer to as “Africa” are included as mechanisms by which the classical concerns of philosophy of religion are engaged, done away with, and/or reinvented. This text was released by Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Jon Ivan is currently writing a text entitled Multi/race/less/ness: A Process Alternative to Category, for Bloomsbury’s Continental Philosophy series, as well as a host of other articles, book chapters, and journal articles.