Connecting More Humans to the Humanities
Experiential Learning
Public Philosophy
Prison Education
Programs & Curricular Design
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Grant Funded Sabbatical
On a year-long, grant-funded sabbatical producing a limited podcast series built from audio documentation of philosophy courses I and other faculty teach in prison education programs — foregrounding incarcerated students as philosophers in their own right.
Selected for a Transom Traveling Workshop (Atlantic Public Media), a week-long intensive in professional audio production, supported by an Awesome Foundation grant.
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Designed full curriculum and scripted content for a 13-episode series introducing foundational political philosophy to a global audience of millions, working closely with producers, writers, and creators.
Held technical accuracy to a professional editorial standard while writing for viewers with no prior background, revising iteratively against feedback and production deadlines.
Program page: https://thecrashcourse.com/topic/politicaltheory/
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Direct an interdisciplinary program integrating Humanities coursework with experiential learning, community partnerships, and internships.
Program page: warren-wilson.edu/programs/public-humanities
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Own reporting and assessment for a campus-wide humanities initiative — using outcome data, not just completion or launch metrics, to demonstrate and improve program effectiveness.
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Introduction to Philsophy
Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, Western Correctional Center for Women (Warren Wilson College)
Stoicism: Then and Now
UNC Asheville Prison Education Program, Buncombe County Detention Facility
Critical Thinking
Prison Education Program, Western Correctional Center for Women (AB Tech Community College)
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Berlin - Weimar - Dessau
Developed and teach "Philosophy, Art, and Politics in Modern Germany," an immersive curriculum on historical memory, aesthetics, and political thought, delivered through the college's "Poets & Dictators" Berlin study-away program.
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Adapt scholarly material on art, politics, and philosophy in modern Germany — Adorno, Benjamin, the Bauhaus, Nazi-era propaganda — into a long-form audio format for general listeners, a third content medium alongside video and print.
Available on Spotify
Berlin Study Abroad: Philosophy, Art, & Politics of Modern Germany
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Led a full curricular design of an honors program and its research requirements; mentored faculty across disciplines on teaching independent inquiry and public presentation of scholarly work.
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Led a municipal commission setting standards and policy for public art acquisition and cultural programming, working across artists, city government, and community stakeholders.
Initiated and implemented a community input process for a Visiting Artist Program for Asheville’s African-American community.
Interview about the project on the Waters & Harvey show on BPR News.
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Evaluated undergraduate honors work against departmental standards in aesthetics and 19th-/20th-century philosophy — independent, external quality assurance on another institution's most rigorous student work.
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Organizing leadership for a regional division of a national scholarly society, including its annual meeting and programming.
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
In Defense of the Dilettante
forthcoming in Aeon
Philosophy in Prison is a Rowdy, Honest, and Hopeful Provocation
Aeon (August 2025); reprinted in The Guardian (September 9, 2025)
Aesthetics by Decree: Trump’s Proposal for ‘Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again’
Aesthetics for Birds, April 2020
What Makes Heavy Metal Heavy?
Aesthetics for Birds, April 2018
Dana Schutz’s Painting of Emmett Till
American Society for Aesthetics Newsletter, Summer 2019
Relational Aesthetics: From Bourriaud to Bishop and Beyond
Field: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism, Issue 3, Winter 2016.
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