Participants at the Inaugural Critical Genealogies Workshop 2016
Natalie Cisneros is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. Her recent work appears in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Radical Philosophy Review, Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, The Prison Information Group, and the Future of Abolition (Eds. Perry Zurn and Andrew Dilts), and Philosophy Imprisoned: The Love of Wisdom in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Eds. Sarah Tyson and Joshua M. Hall). Currently, she is completing a book manuscript that draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Gloría Anzaldúa, as well as other feminists and critical race theorists, to suggest a new approach to political and ethical questions surrounding immigration.
Andrew Dilts is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at Loyola Marymount University. During the 2016-2017 academic year, Dilts will be in residence as a Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is a political theorist who works in the traditions of critical theory and the history of political thought, focusing primarily on the relationships between race, sexuality, political membership, sovereignty, and punishment in the United States. He is the author of Punishment and Inclusion: Race, Membership, and the Limits of American Liberalism (Fordham University Press, 2014) and co-editor (with Perry Zurn) of Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. She is a critical theorist who draws on resources in Political Philosophy, Contemporary European Philosophy, and adjacent disciplines to both examine pressing political issues and articulate normative strategies for political transformation. She is particularly interested in terrorism and political violence as well as diversity and inclusion as two key problems of our time. Her work on these two themes is united by an interest in elaborating a philosophical method that is both descriptively accurate and normatively ambitious. .
Simon Ganahl is post-doctoral researcher in the Department of German Studies at the University of Vienna and lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Zurich. His diploma thesis Ich gegen Babylon: Karl Kraus und die Presse im Fin de Siècle, which received the Bank Austria Research Award, was published by Picus in Vienna in 2006. Simon's PhD thesis in communication Ad oculos et aures: Presse, Radio und Film in der Dritten Walpurgisnacht von Karl Kraus won the Science Award of the Federal State of Vorarlberg in 2010. His second doctoral dissertation, in German Studies, titled Karl Kraus und Peter Altenberg – Eine Typologie moderner Haltungen, was sponsored by an Austrian Academy of Sciences DOC scholarship and will be published by Konstanz University Press. From 2012 to 2013, he was an Erwin Schrödinger Fellow of the Austrian Science Fund in the School of Media Studies at The New School in New York. Simon's papers appeared in peer-reviewed journals and were presented at international conferences. He is also co-editor of the foucaultblog, hosted by the University of Zurich.
Robert Gehl is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at The University of Utah, as well as an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies at Utah. He teaches critical studies of communication technology, new media theory, software studies, basic Web design, and political economy of communication. His research focuses on network cultures and technologies, alternative social media, and the Dark Web. His book Reverse Engineering Social Media (Temple University Press, 2014), explores the architecture and political economy of social media. It won the 2015 Association of Internet Researchers Nancy Baym Award.
Stephanie Jenkins received her BA in Philosophy at Emory University in 2003, her MA in Philosophy from Pennsylvania State University in 2007 and her dual Ph.D. in Philosophy and Women's Studies from Pennsylvania State University in 2012. Her dissertation, Disabling Ethics: A Genealogy of Ability, argues for a genealogy-based ethics that departs from traditional bioethical approaches to disability. Her research and teaching interests include 20th century continental philosophy (especially French), feminist philosophy, disability studies, critical animal studies, and ethics. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time outdoors (hiking, biking, and running), baking, and listening to live music.
Colin Koopman is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He works primarily through the critical traditions of Pragmatism and Genealogy, with an eye toward using methods and concepts from these two traditions to engage current issues in politics, ethics, and culture. He always attempts to challenge himself (and his collaborators and students) to practice philosophy through a style of pluralism that draws widely on diverse figures, traditions, disciplines, and themes. Thus he has sought to develop an understanding of a range of figures across pragmatism (James, Du Bois, Dewey, Rorty, Brandom) and genealogy (Foucault, Nietzsche, Williams), as well as other thinkers in the 'Continental' (Deleuze, Habermas, Latour) and 'Analytic' (Wittgenstein, Cavell, Rawls) traditions. He also aims to make use of work developed in other disciplinary contexts by historians, anthropologists, political scientists, legal theorists, and information scientists. He is the author of Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty (Columbia University Press, 2009) and Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity (Indiana University Press, 2013).
Mary Beth Mader is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Memphis. Her research and teaching interests include twentieth-century continental philosophy, and feminist theory. She is the author of Sleights of Reason: Norm, Bisexuality, Development (SUNY Press, 2011).
Ladelle McWhorter is Stephanie Bennett-Smith Chair in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Richmond. Her research focuses on 20th Century French & German Philosophy, Queer Theory, and Political Theory. She is the author of Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization (Indiana University Press, 1999) and Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy (Indiana University Press, 2009) as well as co-editor (with Gail Stenstad) of Heidegger and the Earth: Essays in Environmental Philosophy (University of Toronto Press, 2nd edition 2009).
Thomas Nail is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. He is currently working on two major research projects. The first is a series of books on the philosophy of movement. So far in the series he has published The Figure of the Migrant with Stanford University Press and Theory of the Border with Oxford University Press. At least three more books are planned for the series and are in various stages of completion. The second project is on the relationship between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault and includes several sub-projects: a book project co-edited with Nicolae Morar and Daniel W. Smith, titled, "Between Deleuze and Foucault;" a journal issue of Foucault Studies titled, Foucault and Deleuze: Ethics, Politics, Psychoanalysis, co-edited with Nicolae Morar and Daniel W. Smith; a conference/workshop organized with Nicolae Morar and Daniel W. Smith, titled "Between Deleuze and Foucault," held at Purdue University Nov. 30 - Dec. 1, 2012; and a transcription and translation of Gilles Deleuze's audio course lectures on Michel Foucault (1985-1986) as part of a grant from Purdue University, in collaboration with the Université de Paris VIII and published on La Voix de Deleuze.
Perry Zurn is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at American University. He researches in the fields of political philosophy, gender theory, and applied ethics. Dr. Zurn is currently writing a monograph-length study of curiosity as a philosophical method. He is the co-editor of Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition (Palgrave, 2015), Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group, 1970-1980 (University of Minnesota Press, under contract), and a special issue of The Carceral Notebooks (forthcoming). His essays and translations have appeared in venues like the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, philoSOPHIA, Radical Philosophy Review, and Zetesis. He is a co-founder of The Prison and Theory Working Group. Dr. Zurn is also committed to diversity work. He served as the sophomore cohort Program Manager for the McNair Scholars Program at DePaul University from 2011-2015 and now serves on the American Philosophical Association’s Diversity Institute Advisory Panel. During the academic year 2016-2017, Dr. Zurn is on a postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for Curiosity at the University of Pennsylvania.
Andrew Dilts is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at Loyola Marymount University. During the 2016-2017 academic year, Dilts will be in residence as a Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is a political theorist who works in the traditions of critical theory and the history of political thought, focusing primarily on the relationships between race, sexuality, political membership, sovereignty, and punishment in the United States. He is the author of Punishment and Inclusion: Race, Membership, and the Limits of American Liberalism (Fordham University Press, 2014) and co-editor (with Perry Zurn) of Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. She is a critical theorist who draws on resources in Political Philosophy, Contemporary European Philosophy, and adjacent disciplines to both examine pressing political issues and articulate normative strategies for political transformation. She is particularly interested in terrorism and political violence as well as diversity and inclusion as two key problems of our time. Her work on these two themes is united by an interest in elaborating a philosophical method that is both descriptively accurate and normatively ambitious. .
Simon Ganahl is post-doctoral researcher in the Department of German Studies at the University of Vienna and lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Zurich. His diploma thesis Ich gegen Babylon: Karl Kraus und die Presse im Fin de Siècle, which received the Bank Austria Research Award, was published by Picus in Vienna in 2006. Simon's PhD thesis in communication Ad oculos et aures: Presse, Radio und Film in der Dritten Walpurgisnacht von Karl Kraus won the Science Award of the Federal State of Vorarlberg in 2010. His second doctoral dissertation, in German Studies, titled Karl Kraus und Peter Altenberg – Eine Typologie moderner Haltungen, was sponsored by an Austrian Academy of Sciences DOC scholarship and will be published by Konstanz University Press. From 2012 to 2013, he was an Erwin Schrödinger Fellow of the Austrian Science Fund in the School of Media Studies at The New School in New York. Simon's papers appeared in peer-reviewed journals and were presented at international conferences. He is also co-editor of the foucaultblog, hosted by the University of Zurich.
Robert Gehl is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at The University of Utah, as well as an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies at Utah. He teaches critical studies of communication technology, new media theory, software studies, basic Web design, and political economy of communication. His research focuses on network cultures and technologies, alternative social media, and the Dark Web. His book Reverse Engineering Social Media (Temple University Press, 2014), explores the architecture and political economy of social media. It won the 2015 Association of Internet Researchers Nancy Baym Award.
Stephanie Jenkins received her BA in Philosophy at Emory University in 2003, her MA in Philosophy from Pennsylvania State University in 2007 and her dual Ph.D. in Philosophy and Women's Studies from Pennsylvania State University in 2012. Her dissertation, Disabling Ethics: A Genealogy of Ability, argues for a genealogy-based ethics that departs from traditional bioethical approaches to disability. Her research and teaching interests include 20th century continental philosophy (especially French), feminist philosophy, disability studies, critical animal studies, and ethics. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time outdoors (hiking, biking, and running), baking, and listening to live music.
Colin Koopman is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He works primarily through the critical traditions of Pragmatism and Genealogy, with an eye toward using methods and concepts from these two traditions to engage current issues in politics, ethics, and culture. He always attempts to challenge himself (and his collaborators and students) to practice philosophy through a style of pluralism that draws widely on diverse figures, traditions, disciplines, and themes. Thus he has sought to develop an understanding of a range of figures across pragmatism (James, Du Bois, Dewey, Rorty, Brandom) and genealogy (Foucault, Nietzsche, Williams), as well as other thinkers in the 'Continental' (Deleuze, Habermas, Latour) and 'Analytic' (Wittgenstein, Cavell, Rawls) traditions. He also aims to make use of work developed in other disciplinary contexts by historians, anthropologists, political scientists, legal theorists, and information scientists. He is the author of Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty (Columbia University Press, 2009) and Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity (Indiana University Press, 2013).
Mary Beth Mader is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Memphis. Her research and teaching interests include twentieth-century continental philosophy, and feminist theory. She is the author of Sleights of Reason: Norm, Bisexuality, Development (SUNY Press, 2011).
Ladelle McWhorter is Stephanie Bennett-Smith Chair in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Richmond. Her research focuses on 20th Century French & German Philosophy, Queer Theory, and Political Theory. She is the author of Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization (Indiana University Press, 1999) and Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy (Indiana University Press, 2009) as well as co-editor (with Gail Stenstad) of Heidegger and the Earth: Essays in Environmental Philosophy (University of Toronto Press, 2nd edition 2009).
Thomas Nail is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. He is currently working on two major research projects. The first is a series of books on the philosophy of movement. So far in the series he has published The Figure of the Migrant with Stanford University Press and Theory of the Border with Oxford University Press. At least three more books are planned for the series and are in various stages of completion. The second project is on the relationship between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault and includes several sub-projects: a book project co-edited with Nicolae Morar and Daniel W. Smith, titled, "Between Deleuze and Foucault;" a journal issue of Foucault Studies titled, Foucault and Deleuze: Ethics, Politics, Psychoanalysis, co-edited with Nicolae Morar and Daniel W. Smith; a conference/workshop organized with Nicolae Morar and Daniel W. Smith, titled "Between Deleuze and Foucault," held at Purdue University Nov. 30 - Dec. 1, 2012; and a transcription and translation of Gilles Deleuze's audio course lectures on Michel Foucault (1985-1986) as part of a grant from Purdue University, in collaboration with the Université de Paris VIII and published on La Voix de Deleuze.
Perry Zurn is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at American University. He researches in the fields of political philosophy, gender theory, and applied ethics. Dr. Zurn is currently writing a monograph-length study of curiosity as a philosophical method. He is the co-editor of Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition (Palgrave, 2015), Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group, 1970-1980 (University of Minnesota Press, under contract), and a special issue of The Carceral Notebooks (forthcoming). His essays and translations have appeared in venues like the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, philoSOPHIA, Radical Philosophy Review, and Zetesis. He is a co-founder of The Prison and Theory Working Group. Dr. Zurn is also committed to diversity work. He served as the sophomore cohort Program Manager for the McNair Scholars Program at DePaul University from 2011-2015 and now serves on the American Philosophical Association’s Diversity Institute Advisory Panel. During the academic year 2016-2017, Dr. Zurn is on a postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for Curiosity at the University of Pennsylvania.