Assistant Professor of Political Theory | Department of Political Science
University of Toronto
A New World of Revolutions
My book A New World of Revolutions: Popular Imaginations and Movements Across the Americas (forthcoming with Princeton University Press) argues that hemispheric politics, discourses, and cultural production were central to the development of postcolonial movements Age of Revolutions (c.1770-1830). I also demonstrate that hemispheric politics and identities framed the development of republican politics and its emancipatory possibilities in the Americas. The book relies on archival ephemera such as marching songs, poems, manifestos, newspapers, plays, and visual artifacts to trace the saliency of hemispheric narratives as they traveled with revolutionary movements from the United States to Argentina. Further, I demonstrate that hemispheric principles had a concrete effect on the revolutionary agendas of these movements, where Indigenous, Mestizo, Pardo, Creole, and enslaved communities deployed hemispheric identities, as Americanos, to legitimize demands for egalitarian reforms. These included the abolition of slavery, tributary practices, and caste systems, as well as the establishment of civic equalities, land rights, the redistribution of property.
Beyond its historiographic analysis the book makes three primary interventions in the field of political theory. First, it demonstrates that marginalized communities transformed the principles of republican political thought by centering ethnoracial standpoints, religious identities, and Indigenous genealogies in their visions for postcolonial emancipation. Second, by thinking from hemispheric identities and cultural production, the book redefines the principles, contexts, and peoples that comprise the canon of American political thought (APT) and situates the tradition as emerging from a distinctly postcolonial context bound to the conditions, publics, and political possibilities of the "new world." Third, by drawing on archival ephemera, visual artifacts, and cultural production, the book aims to expand the archive of political thought as well as illustrate varied approaches for studying the political innovations of popular movements and their publics.
Research Agenda
My broader research agenda is situated in two areas. First, in postcolonial and comparative political theory, my work centers on Indigenous studies, racial and ethnic studies, popular movements, and nation-building. My research aims to bring a vernacular perspective in the study of marginalized groups by tracing the language, practices, and visions they used to subvert colonial power. I bring these questions to bear on contemporary politics by studying the adoption of decolonial politics by popular movements throughout the Americas. My research in this area of work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), Contemporary Political Theory (CPT), and International Theory (IT).
Second, my research aims to expand the scope and archive of the history of political thought. I do so through Latin American, Latinx, and Indigenous Political Thought. This line of research brings overlooked thinkers, contexts, and peoples to bear on the extant literature in political theory, especially as it relates to studies of colonial legacies, political economy, development studies, state building, and studies of empire. My work in this area has appeared in the American Political Science Review (APSR), Polity, Studies in Comparative International Development (SCID), and the International Journal of Political Economy (IJPE).
Peer Reviewed Publications
"Rousseau and Tlaxcala: Republican Freedom and the Trans-imperial Politics of the New World," Polity, forthcoming. with David Lay Williams.
Book Chapters, Review Essays, and Special Issues
“Imperial Subjectivities: Indigenous Claims-Making as Intracolonial Agency” in Non-Western Agency and World Politics (eds. Anahita Arian and John Hobson), forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. With Owen R. Brown.
“Transnational Indigenous Politics and American Political Thought as a Tradition of Encounter” in Movements and American Political Thought (eds. Alex Zamalin and Maxwell Burkey), forthcoming with SUNY University Press.
“Rethinking Subjection: Alternate Imaginaries and Emancipatory Futures,” special issue edited with Gabriel Salgado and Gauri Wagle forthcoming with Philosophy and Global Affairs.
Working Projects
New World Nation-Building: Hemispheric Revolution and the Postcolonial Dimensions of American Political Thought (under review, Princeton University Press).
“Vernacularizing Decolonial Politics: Proposals from Puerto Rico and Colombia.”
“Realist-Utopian Reflexivity in the Age of Power Politics: E.H. Carr and the Colonial Legacies of International Progress.” Under Review.
"Sublime, Mortal, and Rare: Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Exceptional Authority and Republican Inequality." Under Review.
“Naming Negritudes: Transnational Solidarity and Postcolonial Futures in the Colombian Pan-African Congress.”
“Frontiers of Emancipation: Legacies of Abolition in International Politics” with Owen R. Brown.
Public-Facing Scholarship
"La historia del 'progreso' que deja atrás a millones en Colombia: Algunas Lecciones de la Movilización Nacional" in La Silla Vacia with Laura García Montoya (July 2021).
"Colombia's 'progress' Leaves Millions Behind" in Foreign Policy, with Laura García Montoya (June 2021).
Awards and Research Grants
Black, Indigenous, and Racialized Scholars/Scholarship Grant, University of Toronto (2022)
Association for Political Theory and Contemporary Political Theory Submission Prize for "Languages of Transnational Revolution" (2021).
Postdoctoral Fellowship (2021; Declined)
Consortium for Faculty Diversity
Diversity and Inclusion Research Advancement Grant in Indigenous Studies (2020)
American Political Science Association
Gaius Charles Bolin Dissertation Fellowship (2020)
Williams College, Williamstown MA
Franke Graduate Fellowship (2019)
Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities
Northwestern University, Evanston IL
Mellon Foundation Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Studies (2015)
Northwestern University, Evanston IL