I am associate professor and department chair in the philosophy department at Brandeis University. My research and teaching focuses on Kant, ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy.
I have broad interests in Kant’s ethical and legal philosophy. My introduction to Kant’s ethics (2022) appeared in Cambridge’s ‘Elements in Ethics’ series. More recent projects include essays on Kant’s account of moral despair and the moral status of jokes and pranks. Within Kant’s legal philosophy, I am interested in the ways that things like historical injustice affect our ethical obligations to one another. I have a perennial interest in Kant’s account of moral progress, which often brings me back to thinking about his accounts of moral education and the highest good.
My most recent book, A Philosopher Looks at Clothes, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. (Here is a link to the table of contents and preface.) Within aesthetics, I am especially interested in the relationship between beauty and function – and thus unsurprisingly in Kant’s account of adherent beauty. I am also interested in the connection between ethics and aesthetic value, particularly in children’s literature.
You can download a copy of my CV here.