Assistant Professor of Political Theory | Department of Political Science
University of Toronto
New World Nation-Building
'New World' Nation-Building: Hemispheric Revolution and the Postcolonial Dimensions of American Political Thought traces the emergence of what I call Pan-American Discourses, a hemispheric vernacular of anti-colonial revolution that I argue connected the more than thirty popular republican movements which seized control of the Americas during the Age of Revolutions (c.1775-1830). The book relies on archival analysis to connect cases of hemispheric solidarity among Indigenous, Black, and Mestizo-led revolutionary movements in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and the United States with the goal of showing that marginalized communities used Pan-American rhetoric to legitimize demands for egalitarian reforms such as the abolition of slavery, tributary practices, as well as for the establishment of civic equality and protected land rights. In doing so, my study of hemispheric insurgency movements demonstrates that marginalized communities transformed the principles of republican thought by centering ethnoracial standpoints, religious identities, and precolonial genealogies in their visions for post-colonial emancipation. I illustrate these political innovations by using objects of popular discourse, such as marching songs, pamphlets, poems, and visual artifacts used by these movements.
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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.
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. My work demonstrates that these areas have long influenced the field and its thinkers but yet remain overlooked in the field.​
Peer Reviewed Publications
"Rousseau and Tlaxcala: Republican Freedom and the Tran-imperial Politics of the New World," Polity, forthcoming. with David Lay Williams.​
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Book Chapters, Review Essays, and Special Issues
“Imperial Subjectivities: Indigenous Claims-Making as Intracolonial Agency” with Owen Brown. Forthcoming in Non-Western Agency and World Politics edited by Anahita Arian and John Hobson (prepared for Cambridge University Press).
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“Transnational Indigeneities and the Emergence of American Political Thought” in Movements and American Political Thought (eds. Alex Zamalin and Maxwell Burkey), forthcoming with SUNY University Press.
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“Rethinking Subjection: Alternate Imaginaries and Emancipatory Futures,” special issue edited with Gabriel Salgado and Gauri Wagle forthcoming with Philosophy and Global Affairs.
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Review of Remapping Sovereignty: Decolonization and Self-Determination in North American Indigenous Political Thought. By David Myer Temin (University of Chicago Press, 2023). Indigenous Peoples and Borders. Edited by Sheryl Lightfoot and Elsa Stamatopoulou (Duke University Press, 2024). Forthcoming with Perspectives on Politics.
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Working Projects
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New World Nation-Building: Hemispheric Revolution and the Postcolonial Dimensions of American Political Thought.
“Negotiating Racial Subjection: Analyzing Black and Indigenous Resistance from within Colonial Orders” with Owen R. Brown. Revise and Resubmit at International Theory.
“National Development and Claims-Making: Explaining Patterns of Indigenous, Black, and Campesino Mobilization in 1975-1991 Colombia” with Laura García Montoya and Diana Isabel Güiza Gómez. Revise and Resubmit at Studies in Comparative International Development.
“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.”
“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.
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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 Garc​ía Montoya (July 2021).
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"Colombia's 'progress' Leaves Millions Behind" in Foreign Policy, with Laura Garc​ía Montoya (June 2021).
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Awards and Research Grants
Black, Indigenous, and Racialized Scholars/Scholarship Grant, University of Toronto (2022)
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Association for Political Theory and Contemporary Political Theory Submission Prize for "Languages of Transnational Revolution" (2021).
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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
Presidential Fellowship Nominee (2020; Declined)
Northwestern University, Evanston IL
Franke Graduate Fellowship (2019)
Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities
Northwestern University, Evanston IL
Graduate Research Grant (2018)
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Northwestern University, Evanston IL
Doctoral Research Award in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (2018)
Northwestern University, Evanston IL
Mellon Foundation Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Studies (2015)
Northwestern University, Evanston IL