2025 Update

 I'm delighted to announce that I have received the Fairbank Professorship in the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College. This honor is especially meaningful as I mark fifteen years since I finished my PhD at Duke University.

I'm in the process of updating more of this site's contents -- to reflect, for instance, the publication of Earthborn Democracy (co-written with Ali Aslam and David McIvor) this year! For now, I have posted links to nearly all my syllabi under "Teaching" above. If something interests you, please reach out.

Popular posts from this blog

Andrew Rossi's Ivory Tower features Deep Springs College (and my teaching)

Filmmaker Andrew Rossi's new documentary on the escalating costs of college and student debt features Deep Springs College as well as my teaching, depicting the education at Deep Springs as a hopeful alternative to destructive trends in mainstream higher education. I was fortunate to see the West Coast premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival two weeks ago and I recommend the film to anyone and everyone interested in thinking about the current landscape of higher education. (For more information on the film and the discussion around the cost of college and student debt, see the Ivory Tower website .) The shots of my course at Deep Springs come from a seminar I taught during Spring 2013 called "Freedom and the State." (The syllabus is available here .) Viewers will witness a few snippets of a much longer discussion on the penultimate sections of Hegel's Philosophy of Right . I'd love to hear what you think!
Read more

2019 - 2021 Courses

Tenure, a sabbatical, and -- most important -- the arrival of two new members to my family have pulled me away from regular updates to my site here. I'm now adding course syllabi, so under TEACHING above you can find the following, which I've taught since 2018. Living a Democratic Life (Summer 2020). A special seminar for Outer Coast , a nascent two-year institution of higher education in Sitka, Alaska. Energetic and thrilling discussions of John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. Reflecting on Black Lives Matter protests organized by Anchorage-based students. Facilitating reflection on “the power of the people” embodied – in virtual form – by the Student Body. Through this course, I delighted in helping to construct a self-reflective community, not just teaching students about the meanings and possibilities of democracy but collaborating on a more democratic way of being together, be that through playing Scribl.io or talking about the politics of ancient Athens. Anti-Poli...
Read more

DeLillo, Herodotus, and the stones of Athens

 Don DeLillo’s The Names begins with what feels like a long camera take, trailing a character from behind as he walks around the streets of the Plaka, the central market district of Athens. The longer the shot continues, however, the more you realize that the man who’s leading you is not the central character. There’s someone, something else. You keep glimpsing it between the blocks, above the antennas and awnings and electrical wires. It’s apparitional, a massive presence that seems to hover in the middle distance, glimmering and impassive beneath the bright Mediterranean sunshine. At long last the character stops in an open plaza, pauses, then looks up. The camera follows. The Acropolis rises like a brilliant white column shooting skyward, its pillars and pediments strident yet effortless. The high city. I gasped when I first glimpsed the Acropolis. I was stepping onto the balcony of an apartment I’d rented for six weeks in Kolonaki, a wealthy neighborhood in central Athens. My h...
Read more