Research Interests

Research:

My work in philosophy pertains principally to the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and question arising therefrom. These have included subjects of the centrality of agonistic relations to socio-political life, life-affirmation, disgust, the development of the self and quandary of identity, Nietzsche’s idea of Europe and corresponding notion of “good Europeanism”, and the role of joy and laughter in self-creation and its ramifications for interpersonal relations.
My current work includes three projects, the first being an essay focusing on the issue of longing in Nietzsche’s thought and its role in his conception of self-creation, opposition to anti-naturalism, and the overcoming of humanity. In this essay I consider the significance of desire in his thought, including its expression in both his idea of the free spirit and self-overcoming, and the socio-political ramifications of each.
The second paper, tentatively entitled ‘At the Door to a Labyrinth of Daring Knowledge: Nietzsche on Truth and Emancipation‘, examines Nietzsche’s critique of the post-Enlightenment notion of truth, its relation to his analysis of slave morality, and — via his critique of the women’s rights movement in late-19th century Germany — emancipation. I then consider the relevance of this for individual freedom and contemporary social movements.
The third project consists of two-part study in which I first offer a reading of Camus’s notion of the nostalgia for unity and its relation to the absurd through Nietzsche, combined with an assessment of Camus’s engagement with Nietzsche’s work. I then offer a reading of Sartre’s concept of the lack, again through Nietzsche, whose works significantly influenced both of these 20th-century Existentialist thinkers.

My work in international relations has examined U.S. foreign policy toward and interventions in the Middle East, and ethno-national conflict and conflict resolution in the former Yugoslavia and the Caucasus, regions in which I have lived, worked, and through which I have traveled widely. I have given invited talks to the Douglas County Library Current Events Series and the Denver Council on Foreign Relations on subjects ranging from the revolts across the Arab world (the so called “Arab Spring”) of 2010–2013, U.S. responses to the bellicosity of the DPRK and its destabilization of north-eastern Asia, the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, and the 25th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

On the subject of globalization, I work on issues related to the universal imposition of Anglo-European liberal-modern values and the political ramifications of the consequent homogenization of disparate cultures throughout the world. I am currently working on the effects wrought by the discourses of universalism in the post-war Human Right regime.