I came to MAPSS in the fall of 2008 to study the political thought of Marx and Foucault. To this end, I benefited greatly from courses such as “Punishment and Social Theory” (Harcourt), “Inclusion & Exclusion” (Muthu), “Frankfurt School Critical Theory” (Postone), and “Interpretive Methods in Political Theory” (Cyrenne). Under the supervision of Bernard Harcourt, my M.A. thesis “Docile (Working) Bodies” engaged the thought of Foucault and Agamben in a genealogical study of the terminology of “disarmed enemy combatant,” tracing it back to the carceral, labor, and re-education program of German P.O.W.s interred in the United States during the second World War. MAPSS gave me my first real opportunity to engage an archive, as well as pushing me to think critically about how I may choose to mobilize the theoretical concepts I engage. Through this honing of my methodology, I was able to gain admission to the Politics Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where I am currently a Ph.D. candidate with a designated emphasis in the History of Consciousness. My current research is a comparative project on theories and politics of aesthetics and the influence it has upon political imaginaries, ranging from Victorian London to the present.
