Research Areas

The ambiguous historical-cultural concept of modernity is at the center of my research. Some of the thinkers I cover include:

• Hannah Arendt 

• Walter Benjamin

• Max Weber

• Leo Strauss

• Theodore Adorno

• Max Horkheimer

• Karl Marx

• Giorgio Agamben

I research and write on Latin American political thought, covering mostly 19th and 20th century thinkers, including:

• Simon Bolivar

• Andres Bello

• Francisco Bilbao

• Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

• Juan Bautista Alberdi

• Jose Enrique Rodo

• Jose Carlos Mariategui

• Leopoldo Zea

• Jose Merquior

Within Spanish thought, I primarily focus the tradition of Spanish liberalism, but I also research the following thinkers:

• Jose Ortega y Gasset

• Miguel de Unamuno

• Maria Zambrano

• Miguel de Cervantes

• Francisco Romero 

• Luis Diez de Corral

The legacy and influence of Enlightenment thought in Latin America is a part of my dissertation, but I also research the following thinkers in their own right:

• Montesquieu

• Jean Jacques Rousseau

• Guillaume T. F. (Abbé) Raynal

• Voltaire

• Denis Diderot

• David Hume

• Adam Smith

The intersection of literature and politics is integral to much of my research. The following thinkers, who span a number of periods, are among my favorites to teach and study:

• William Shakespeare

• John Milton

• T.S. Eliot

• Fernando Pessoa

• Oswald de Andrade

• Miguel de Cervantes

• Dante Alighieri

• Fyodor Dostoevsky

• W.B. Yeats

The early modern period forms the foundation of much of my dissertation work. The following is a sample of thinkers I cover:

• Francis Bacon

• Thomas Hobbes

• Michel de Montaigne

• Giovanni Botero

• Rene Descartes

• Blaise Pascal

• Giambattista Vico

• Thomas More

My methodological training is in intellectual history, namely Cambridge School historicism. I have a broader research interest on the methods of intellectual history and the writing of history, which include the following thinkers: 

• Quentin Skinner

• J. G. A. Pocock

• John Dunn

• Karl Lowith

• Friedrich Nietzsche

• Jacob Buckhardt

• Johan Huizinga

• R.G. Collingwood

• Arthur Lovejoy

• Leo Strauss

• Hayden White