I am broadly trained in the history of political thought – and offer coursework stretching from early modernity to contemporary debates.  What follows is a list of my regular course offerings.

Critical Theory: Power and Resistance.  Undergraduate seminar.  An exploration of those theoretical schools that seek to unveil hidden economies of power, domination, or exploitation – and offer possibilities for resistance, revolution, or other forms of agency.  Theorists include Marx, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, Habermas, Foucault, Butler, Fanon and Mbembe.

Race, Prisons, Citizenship. Undergraduate seminar. This course treats the organizing myth of liberal democracies: equal benefits and rights to all citizens. But who gets to count as a citizen and who is excluded from all (or part) of these benefits?   Special attention is dedicated to mass incarceration and racial citizenship.

Conservative Political Thought: From Old Right to Alt-Right. Undergraduate lecture course. This course untangles the competing strains of what presents itself as conservatism, tracks their historical shifts, and assesses their influence on the contemporary political scene. Particular attention is dedicated to the rise of the New Right (and its offshoot, the so-called alt-Right) and it treats topics such as anticommunism, traditionalism, the culture wars, and immigration.

Capitalism and its Critics.  Undergraduate lecture course.  An engagement with the most significant political debates that surround the economic and social form of of capitalism – through such topics as poverty, exploitation, commodification, consumption, democratic citizenship, and ecological sustainability.  Texts by Friedman, Polanyi, Marx, Sen, Walzer, Sandel, Klein, and others.

Contemporary Political Theory. Undergraduate lecture course. This course treats selected debates on the contemporary scene through the lens of political theory.  At present, the course treats the role of science in a democratic society, the increasing pull toward a “post-truth” politics, the promise and threats of the internet for politics, and the spread of biopolitics as a mode of power and governance.

Modern Political Theory.  A survey of central themes and texts within the modern tradition of political thought.  Texts by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, and Marx.

Introduction to Political Theory.  Undergraduate lecture course.  An introduction to political theory that covers a range of historical and ideological orientations.