Teaching

As a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at Georgetown University, I have enjoyed teaching and writing on a range of texts from the history of political thought. My research focuses on a body of constitutional writing that emerged during the French Reformation and Wars of Religion, a key period of transition from medieval to modern political orders. In my dissertation, I seek to evaluate several permutations of constitutional argumentation—along with their concomitant theories of sovereignty, state, legitimacy, and resistance—that emerged under conditions of sectional violence and civil war, especially following the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572. Key figures of my study include Jean Calvin, Théodore de Bèze, François Hotman, and Jean Bodin, while relevant contexts include conciliarism and Gallicanism, humanist writings on counsel, French legal humanism, and broader currents of Protestant political thought.

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Other closely related interests include medieval and early modern mirrors for princes (Christine de Pizan, Desiderius Erasmus, Guillaume Budé) and writings on commercial friendship, economic statecraft, cosmopolitanism, and reason of state during the long sixteenth century (Lorenzo Valla, Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, Giovanni Botero).