English Faculty

I am an Assistant Teaching Professor cross-appointed to the Department of Philosophy, History and Politics and the Department of English and Modern Languages. My research and teaching stem primarily from the traditions of critique (especially German idealism and Hegel) in nineteenth and twentieth-century continental philosophy.

My current work addresses questions of marginalization and domination within modern society. My book, The Problem of Nature in Hegel's Final System (2018), explores these problems in the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel and critically evaluates the status of nature, mental illness, crime and the institution of punishment in his conception of modern social life. I have also published on the significance of Hegel's political philosophy for the Frankfurt school of critical theory. Prioritizing an interdisciplinary approach, I teach in a variety of contexts: explorations of nineteenth-century philosophy, critical theory, existentialism; critiques of social contract theory (Goldman, Fanon, Tuck and Yang); analyses of morality, ideology, and the unconscious (Nietzsche, Marx, Freud); examinations of race and gender in the history of literature (David Walker, William Apess, Mary Wollstonecraft).

My research also draws from early German romanticism (and critical theory) to conceptualize art as an expression of alternative (liberating) human possibilities. I have published on Friedrich Schiller's concept of the emancipatory quality of art. I also teach courses that explore the interconnections of philosophy, social theory and literature in the history of utopianism: visions of progressive (and/or regressive) social change from the early modern period to the 21st-century.

Publishing in the areas of culture in Canadian small cities, third-age learning, alternative pedagogies, and Indigenous dramas.