Campus Directory

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Politics Department

Title Associate Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Classical Studies
History of Consciousness Department

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Areas of Expertise Political Theory
History of Philosophy
Democracy
African American / Black Studies
Philosophy

Web Site

Primary Office Location Merrill College Academic Building
112

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours Wednesday, 1:30-3:30

Mail Stop Merrill/Crown Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D., Political Science. University of California at Berkeley, 2003
M.A., Political Science. University of California at Berkeley, 1996
B.A. Summa Cum Laude, Economics and Political Science. University of Minnesota, 1995

Summary of Expertise

Insurgent democracy; Black radicalism; political economy and luxury; the politics of enjoyment and material life

Research Interests

I study the collective practices through which people generate surplus from within constraint, and the discursive and figural mechanisms through which that surplus is contained, pathologized, or heard as noise. Working the seam where governing power meets what it can't govern, I theorize what survives the encounter, in archives and in the arguments built to make sense of them.

My current project develops these themes through the work of Fred Moten and Saidiya Hartman and critical engagement with the democratic theory of Jacques Rancière. Through a series of encounters, I argue that the emphasis on fugitivity in Black studies and political theory has yet to fully reckon with modes of freedom, figuration, and pleasure that precede and exceed enclosure rather than refuse or take flight from it.

My other ongoing or completed work traces how political economies carry images of political life through material culture and embodied practice, from early modern luxury discourse to contemporary technologies of self-cultivation.

My first book, Appeals to Interest: Language, Contestation, and the Shaping of Political Agency (Penn State Univ Press, 2011), has been reviewed in Perspectives on Politics, Theory & Event, Political Studies Review, Political Theory, and other leading journals. I also edited and contributed to Hanna Fenichel Pitkin: Politics, Judgement, Action, a volume in Routledge's series, Innovators in Political Thought (2016). I have also written numerous articles, reviews, and interviews, linked below.

Teaching Interests

My courses take up democratic theory, African-American political thought, political economy, queer theory, and the ancient Greeks.

INDEPENDENT STUDY AND SENIOR THESES

If you would like to arrange an independent study or a senior thesis, first have a look at these Guidelines for Independent Study. They describe what I consider when deciding whether to supervise a project, my expectations and limitations regarding the nature and scope of the work, how I handle independent study credit associated with internships, and senior thesis projects.

LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION

If you are seeking a letter of recommendation from me, please consult my protocol for letters of recommendation. There, you can find information on when it's appropriate for me to write a letter, when your request should be submitted, the materials I need to write the letter, and when I should receive them.

Awards, Honors and Grants

UCSC Excellence in Teaching Award: 2006, 2016, 2025

Selected Presentations

"Meditation's Political Potential," an interview with C. S. Soong, Against the Grain, KPFA (Pacifica Radio), July 11, 2016

Selected Publications

• "The Berkeley School of Political Theory as Moment and as Tradition," in PS: Political Science & Politics (July 2017)
• "Good-for-Nothing Practice and the Art of Paradox: The Exemplary Citizenship of Ta-Nehisi Coates," in The Arrow (April 2017)
• "Kairos and Affect in Rancière’s 'Ten Theses on Politics'" in Theory & Event 20:1 (January 2017)
• "'Meditation is Good for Nothing': Leisure as a Democratic Practice," in New Political Science 38:2 (June 2016)
• "Hanna Fenichel Pitkin and the Dilemmas of Political Thinking," in Hanna Fenichel Pitkin: Politics, Justice, Action. ed. Dean Mathiowetz, Routledge, 2016
• "Gay Love Conquers All," The Contemporary Condition (July 14, 2013)
• Review of The Invention of Market Freedom by Eric MacGilvray, in Perspectives on Politics 10:2 (June 2012)
• Appeals to Interest: Language, Contestation, and the Shaping of Political Agency, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.
• “Feeling Luxury,” in Theory & Event 13:4 (Winter 2010)
• “Paying Attention,” review of Capital and Language: From the New Economy to the War Economy, by Christian Marazzi, in Theory & Event 13.3 (Fall 2010)
• “‘Interest’ is a Verb: Arthur Bentley and the Language of Interest,” Political Research Quarterly 61:4 (December 2008)
• “The Juridical Subject of ‘Interest’” in Political Theory 35:4, pp 468-493 (August 2007)
• “Pop Art and Political Symbolism: ‘Property’ and Representation in Texas v. Johnson” in Critical Sense, pp. 41-72 (Spring 1999)
• Review of Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology by John McCormick, in Center for German and European Studies Forum (Spring 1998)

Advisees, Grad Students & Researchers Feng, Yudi (yfeng25)
Wadkins, Carlos (cwadkins)

Courses Politics 105A: Ancient Political Thought
Politics 115: Foundations of Political Economy
Politics 190Y: African-American Political Thought
Politics 100: Queer Theory (Writing Seminar)