i have written

below are some of the papers, stories, articles, etc. that i have written. i won’t share full texts, but would be happy to discuss any of them (at length) with you.

Egoism, Anomie, and Pessoa through Durkheim

in this paper, i analyze the life and work of Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa through Durkheim’s concept of egoism. using him as a case study of how anomie has become overly generalized and cumbersome, i argue for a renewed investigation of egoism as an analytic category with which to frame interwar and postwar art.

Classically Theorizing Trump’s Reelection

i argue here that Trump’s reelection in 2024 would be understood by Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and DuBois (the four major classical sociological theorists) as an inherently rational act, and that the Democratic Party’s disbelief/surprise/insistence that it was an irrational fluke is a politically counterproductive perspective.

Neoliberation: Towards an Anti-Racist Scholarship of Neoliberalism

perhaps the most substantial work from my freshman year: in 20 pages and with 82 unique sources, i argue that scholars (both neo-Marxists and Foucauldians, the two major camps of theorists of neoliberalism, as I see it) tacitly buy into neoliberalism even as they critique it. in particular, they fail to fully engage its racial aspects.

by situating neoliberalism in the longue durée of racial capitalism, i aim to demonstrate how neoliberalism is inherently racialized, and thus how scholars who implicitly take on neoliberal doctrine into their arguments fail to be sufficiently anti-racist. i conclude by arguing that the remedy to these shortcomings is to adopt approaches informed by critical anthropology, centering the phenomenologies of oppressed and ‘surplus’ populations to help us escape the immanent perspective on neoliberalism that most scholars hold.

“The power of anthropology, in other words, is that it forces us outside of neoliberalism and its racist logics, and further shows us the possible realities that we may attain in freeing ourselves from its manacles. By taking us outside of our own cultural life-worlds, it de-naturalizes, de-fatalizes, and situates the racialized neoliberal present as a contingent and epochal phenomenon that can—and must—be overcome.”

Healthcare as a “Right”

here, i analyze the rhetorical invocation of the word “right” with respect to healthcare and health insurance, and what it actually denotes (if anything) when we get down to brass tacks. i explore the many dyads of the word, including legal/moral and positive/negative rights, and what actionable systems or reforms it is used to promote.

Ways of Knowing: Biomedicine as Experiential Supplement

from an ethnographic interview i conducted with a patient who had undergone treatment for spontaneous pneumothorax (collapsed lung), i probe the ways that technologies, medical professionals, and hospital rituals come to inform or even replace an individual’s sensory experience of an illness, and how authorized medical narratives come to be used and prized by patients.

Bryan Johnson: Embodying (Ab)Normality

Bryan Johnson is a multimillionaire “biohacker” who aims to optimize his health and slow his aging through technology. i read his efforts through the lens of biopolitics, and attempt to explain why his efforts at total normality (statistically perfect health) seem so abnormal through a critical historical account of “normality.”

Pedagogy, Payment, and Patient Needs: The Emergence and Values of Teaching Hospitals in the Early 20th Century

i trace the maturation of the American teaching hospital from the turn of the 20th century onwards, arguing that what was initially an institution for healing individuals has become overly preoccupied with financial and epistemological remuneration, which ultimately impoverishes medical care itself.

The Medicine of Politics: Ideology and the Human Body in Early America

the early developments of modern medicine may seem arbitrary and backwards (and often they were), but, despite their scientific deficiencies, they were ideologically rich reflections of their historical and geographic contexts. i zoom in here on Benjamin Rush and medicine in Revolutionary/Early Republic America to see how medical theories and practices were marshalled in line with political needs.