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My research focuses on modern and contemporary political theory.  I am interested in intersections and discrepancies between intellectual traditions, including debates between marxism and postmodernism, as well as both marxist and postmodern critiques of liberalism.  I focus largely on theories of subjectivity and agency, and the relationship between various theories of the subject and modes of political organization.  I am currently at work on the following projects:

The Politics of Responsibility  

This is a book about responsibility that examines the concept's contentious history as well as its contemporary value.  It is under contract with the University of Illinois Press.

New Orleans 2005: A Crisis of Agency in the Agency of Crisis (with Chris Russill)

In this "social autopsy", we explore the social structures and political practices that contributed to the recent flooding of New Orleans.  In the process, we assess the state of crisis theory as well as the role of the media in managing political affairs.

Eating Anxiety: A Consumer's Guide to Globalist Dining

For centuries, theorists have been pointing out how the external world makes ideological and material intrusions into supposedly individual bodies.  Nowhere is this more the case than when the individual body literally incorporates the external world -- that is, when we eat.  This project examines contemporary anxieties over food as manifestations of broader anxieties over individual autonomy so as to better understand both the stakes of food debates as well as the popular challenges to the myth of liberal individualism.