University of Colorado Denver College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Bio

My research interests fall within social and political philosophy and the history of philosophy generally, and within Frankfurt School critical theory, critical race and feminist theory, and the philosophy of law and right more specifically. My historical interests include: (1) modern natural law theories of subjective right, personality, and private property, particularly as they relate to modern political sovereignty, theories of jurisdiction, and European colonialism; and (2) German Idealism (from Kant to Hegel). Both inform my interests in methodologies of critique and contemporary theories of social justice, race and gender, and the proprietary dimensions of legal and ethical cosmopolitanism.

Two of my long-term projects consider the conceptual origins of modern subjective right in the colonization of the Americas, and Hegel’s philosophy of history and European colonialism. The latter is presently taking shape as a book manuscript, “Hegel and the Colonial World: Right, Jurisdiction, and Ethical Life.” I’m also currently working on an edited volume tentatively titled “Environmental Ethics and Property Right,” as well as translating the work of contemporary German critical theorists.

I currently serve as Director of the UCD CLAS Social Justice Minor and was a recent (2010) recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award in the UCD College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Select Publications

Pragmatism, Nation, and Race: Community in the Age of Empire (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009), co-edited with Eduardo Mendieta.

“Review of Charles Mills’ and Carole Pateman’s Contract and Domination,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 23:4 (2010): 370-373.

Interview with Angela Y. Davis: “Resistance, Language, and Law,” in Angela Y. Davis, Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, Empire (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 105-132.

Translation of Walter Benjamin, “Fragment 74: Capitalism as Religion,” in Eduardo Mendieta, ed. Religion as Critique: The Frankfurt School's Critique of Religion (New York: Routledge, 2005), 259-262.

Courses Taught

PHIL 1020: Ethics and Society
PHIL 3500: Ideology and Culture: Race and Gender
PHIL 4000: Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
PHIL 4260: Philosophy of Law
PHIL 5013: Philosophical Problems in the Social Sciences: Western Marxism and the Frankfurt School