Research and Teaching Summary
My research and teaching focus on the aesthetics of subjectivization—the sensible, affective procedures and processes through which one becomes individuated and recognized as a subject within the social. (A list of selected publications can be found here.) I am especially interested in the aesthetics of race, gender, and disability and the ways that these different experiences of subjectivity (or being ‘othered’) determine how individuals appear—or fail to appear—as subjects within social spaces, particularly within institutions. Consequently, I engage with artistic, philosophical, and social practices aimed at disrupting those established forms of sensibility that keep existing relations of power in place. I situate my work at the intersections of philosophy and those fields that actively reflect on the relationship between theory and practice: critical race theory, feminism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis.
I am currently completing two book-length manuscripts: “The Scene of the Voice: Thinking Language after Affect” and “Amnesias of Place” The former investigates the figure of the voice in the work of Martin Heidegger and its reception in contemporary French thought, including the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Maurice Blanchot, and Gilles Deleuze.
The project “Amnesias of Place” excavates the metaphysical conceptions of the body that animate the design and organization of space on architectural, urban, and global levels. In the book, I approach architecture and urban design as speculative metaphysical systems whose purposes are to reproduce an idealized, ahistorical body and forget their roles in excluding the real material bodies of those who have been othered in terms of race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability.
Courses that I regularly offer at Appalachian State include PHL 3050 Philosophy of Race and PHL 3030 Feminist Philosophy. I am also an affiliated faculty member with the Program in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at Appalachian State and a visiting faculty member with the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York City.
Education
PhD Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture (PIC), Binghamton University, 2007
Whitney Museum of Art Independent Study Program, 1999-2000
Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria, 1998-99
University of Vienna, Comparative Literature, Vienna, Austria, 1998-99
MA Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture (PIC), Binghamton University, 1997
BA Philosophy & Anthropology, Binghamton University, 1994
Oxford University, Philosophy and Socio-Cultural Anthropology, Hertford College, 1993
Fellowships and Awards
Shula Chair in Philosophy, John Carroll University, 2016-18
Summer Course Development Grant, Catholic Studies, John Carroll University, 2016
Duke Women’s Studies Ford Foundation Interdisciplinary Course Development Grant, Spring 2016
Grauel Faculty Research Fellowship, John Carroll University, Spring 2014
Summer Research Fellowship, John Carroll University, 2011
NEH Summer Seminar Visiting Scholar, “Shanghai and Berlin: Cultures of Urban Modernism in Interwar China and Germany,” Stanford University, 2010
Fulbright Fellow, Vienna, Austria, 1998-99
Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies, Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Studies Program, 1999-2000
DAAD Language-study Scholarship, Sprachintensiv Kurs am Herder Institut der Universität Leipzig, 1995
Title: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Faculty Affiliate, Program in Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies
Email address: Email me
Phone: (828) 262-2420