My research centers on German Idealism, Hegelianism, Western Marxism, and American Pragmatism, with emphasis on questions of time, history, and political agency. In The Principle of Political Hope (Oxford University Press, 2023), I describe hope as an indispensable aspect of much German and American political thought, and I am now working on a book about the idea of historical and political generations. I have written about John Dewey, Richard Rorty, Immanuel Kant, Ernst Bloch, William James, Wendy Brown, Étienne Cabet, political hope, the idea of the future, modern classical music, the appearance/reality distinction, ontological materialism, ChatGPT, and Mad Men, among other things, in venues that include Political Theory, Theory & Event, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Analyse & Kritik, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, The Journal of the Philosophy of History, Praktyka Teoretyczna, Perspectives of New Music, New Political Science, European Journal of Social Theory, The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought, The Cambridge Habermas Lexicon, and William James Studies, for which I used to be book review editor (2013-2018). A special issue of the journal History of the Present that Max Tomba and I edited on the legacy of Thomas Müntzer and the German Peasants’ War will appear on its 500th anniversary in 2025.
I co-translated (with Peter Thompson), introduced, and annotated Ernst Bloch’s Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left (Columbia University Press, 2019), and am preparing a translation of his Thomas Müntzer as Theologian of Revolution, under contract with Columbia.
I have coordinated Penn’s Political Theory Workshop since 2017 and am a member of the faculty Graduate Group in the Department of Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies. In the classroom, I lecture on modern and American political thought, and have taught seminars on topics including the philosophy of history, ideas of progress, German political thought, utopianism, American Pragmatism, Hegel & Marx, Western Marxism, and anarchism. I received the Pi Sigma Alpha Society's Henry Teune Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching in 2018, a year when, according to a rigorously scientific online poll in The Daily Pennsylvanian, my American Political Thought lecture was the most popular class on campus.
In the Fall of 2024, I am a Visiting Fellow at the Democratic Hope Research Group at the Freie Universität Berlin; in the Fall of 2019, I was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Previously, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Ohio University (Political Science, 2013-2016); before that, I held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at UC Berkeley (Rhetoric, 2011-2013) and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Rutgers University Center for Cultural Analysis (2010-2011).
I live with my family in wonderful West Philly.
Ph.D., MA, Political Science, University of Chicago (2010, 2005)
M.Phil., Politics, University of Oxford (2003)
DAAD Jahresstipendiat, Philosophy, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt (2000-2001)
BA, Political Science, Yale University (2000)
Undergraduate: American Political Thought; Modern Political Thought; Utopia and Its Critics; Anarchism; War in Political Thought
Graduate: German Political Thought; Philosophies of History; American Pragmatism; Hegel, Marx & Beyond; Western Marxism; Ideas of Progress
The Principle of Political Hope: Progress, Action, and Democracy in Modern Thought (Oxford, 2023).
Ernst Bloch, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left (Columbia, 2019), translation (with Peter Thompson), including an introduction and annotations.
“Utopia on the Mississippi: Étienne Cabet’s American Icaria Between Theory and Practice,” in Social Movements and American Political Thought, edited by Alex Zamalin and Maxwell Burkey (SUNY, forthcoming). With Francis Russo.
“The Miraculous End of Political Hope,” Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy (2024; online first).
“Experimentation and the Future(s) of Political Hope,” European Journal of Social Theory 27, no. 2 (May 2024): 153-173.
“Matter, Music, and Ecology in Ernst Bloch and George Crumb,” Perspectives of New Music 61, no. 1 (Winter 2023): 217-241. With Susanna Loewy.
“The Matter of Bloch’s Philosophy of Nature in the Shadow of Idealism,” in Rethinking Ernst Bloch, ed. Henk de Berg and Cat Moir (Brill, 2023), 180-205.
“The Future is Now: ChatGPT Confessions of a Blochhead,” New Political Science 45, no. 3 (Aug. 2023): 551-554.
“Reading Wendy Brown in Ludwigshafen: Non-Synchronicity and the Exhaustion of Progress,” in Power, Neoliberalism, and the Reinvention of Politics, ed. Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta (Penn State, 2022), 63-79.
“William James, Energy, and the Pluralist Ethic of Receptivity,” Theory & Event 23, no. 3 (July 2020): 706-33.
“Left Hegelian Variations: on the Matter of Revolution in Marx, Bloch, and Althusser,” Praktyka Teoretyczna 35, no. 1 (Apr. 2020): 51-74.
“Richard Rorty, Homo Academicus Politicus,” Analyse & Kritik 41, no. 1 (May 2019): 31-70.
“Revisiting the Social Value of College Breeding,” in Pragmatism Applied: William James and the Challenges of Contemporary Life, ed. Michael Levine and Cliff Stagoll (SUNY, 2019), 31-56.
“Utopia” and “Ernst Bloch,” in The Cambridge Habermas Lexicon, ed. Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta (Cambridge, 2019).
“Richard Rorty’s ‘Post-Kantian’ Philosophy of History,” The Journal of the Philosophy of History 9, no. 3 (Nov. 2015): 410-443.
“Appearance/Reality” and “Pragmatism,” in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015).
“In Defense of Blinders: On Kant, Political Hope, and the Need for Practical Belief,” Political Theory 40, no. 4 (Aug. 2012): 497-523.
“John Dewey’s Pragmatism from an Anthropological Point of View,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 48, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 1-30.
“Another Side of William James: Radical Appropriations of a ‘Liberal’ Philosopher,” William James Studies 8 (2012): 34-64.
