I am currently an Assistant Professor of Government at Smith College. My work is situated at the intersection of the history of political thought, the history of the emotions, and secularization studies. Fundamentally, I am interested in how our emotional habits condition our responses to political phenomena. My book manuscript, A Political Theory of Wonder: Feelings of Order in Modern Political Thought, excavates and analyzes how wonder has been used by modern political thinkers in a supposedly disenchanted world to establish and sustain political institutions such as the sovereign state and the market economy. From Hobbes to Arendt, I find a subterranean debate on the proper conceptualization and use of wonder in modern political life. Other longstanding interests include continental political theory, the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, aesthetics and politics, republicanism, American political thought, and the political thought of Hannah Arendt.
I received my doctorate in Political Science from UCLA in 2019. I also hold an A.M. in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago (2012) and a B.A. in Political Science and History from the University of Kansas (2010). My work has appeared in Political Theory, History of Political Thought, and Theory & Event. From 2017 to 2020, I served as the Assistant Book Review Editor for Political Theory. Previously, I have been a lecturer in the UCLA Political Science Department and the LMU Political Science Department.