Connecting More Humans to the Humanities

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  • Experiential Learning

  • Public Philosophy

  • Prison Education

Programs & Curricular Design

Berlin Study Abroad: Philosophy, Art, & Politics of Modern Germany

Civic & Institutional Leadership

City of Asheville Public Art & Cultural Commission:

Visiting Artist Program

As Chair of Asheville’s Public Art and Cultural Commission, I formed a local leadership team of artists, educators, and activists to launch a Visiting Artist Program tha aimed to host an artist who could support the community’s creation of memorable places, promote Asheville’s African American history, and encourage local participation in diverse acts of cultural expression. Guided by multiple community discussions and public input sessions, the Charlotte-based artist collective, Art Ecologie, was selected for the collaborative, mentoring relationship with local artists and the community.

Selected Publications

Peer Reviewed Books, Articles and Chapters

  • The Politics of Perception and the Aesthetics of Social Change

    Columbia University Press (2021)

  • Hegel and Contemporary Identity Politics

    forthcoming in Owl of Minerva

  • Irony in Earnest: Rethinking Hegel’s Critique of Romantic Aesthetics

    Inquiry, Vol. 68, Issue 3, 2025: 1–22

  • Public Philosophy and the Prison Population

    forthcoming in Philosophy Without Borders: A New Take on Public Philosophy (Peter Lang)

  • Space is Place: Why the Placement of Sculpture Matters

    in The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Painting and Sculpture, ed. Noël Carroll and Jonathan Gilmore (Routledge, 2023)

  • Headbanging as Kinaesthetic Appreciation

    in The Heaviest Ideas in the Universe, ed. Aaron Simmons and Benjamin McCraw (Wiley Blackwell, 2026)

  • What Makes Heavy Metal ‘Heavy’?

    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 80, Issue 1, 2022: 70–82

  • Beyond the Middle Finger: Plato, Schiller, and the Political Aesthetics of Ai Weiwei

    Critical Horizons, Vol. 17, Issue 3–4, 2016: 304–323

  • The Value of Aesthetics in Hegel’s Social Theory

    Constellations, Vol. 23, Issue 1, March 2016: 96–109

Public Writing

Experienatial Learning

A core principle of my teaching is that students aren’t just learning philosophy—they’re doing Philosophy. This means conducting interviews, engaging with and producing podcasts, make zines, organizing events, debates, and workshops, as a critical aspect of student learning and scholarship. Engaged philosophy is a crucial catalyst, not a substitute, for developing critical analytic in writing skills