Scholarship
Welcome! I am a political theorist studying at Georgetown University, with American government as my secondary field. I am interested in the moral psychology undergirding theories of sovereignty, constituent power, and constitutional order from the early modern period to today. My current research focuses on a body of sixteenth-century thinkers associated with French public humanism and the French and Swiss reformations. I am interested in teaching in the fields of political theory, American government, and constitutional law. You can find more concerning my research and teaching experience below.
Research
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.
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).
Portrait of Jean Calvin by Titian (16th c.)
via Wikimedia Commons
Papers in Progress
Jean Calvin's 1532 Seneca Commentary
Google Books, University of Ghent
Bridling the Prince: Humanist Counsel and its Perils in Calvin's Seneca Commentary (1532)
This paper explores the humanist sources of Jean Calvin's constitutional theory in his 1532 commentary on Seneca's De Clementia. It examines Calvin's critical appraisal of Senecan rhetoric in light of 16th c. humanist writings concerning the problem of counsel, arguing that Calvin's turn to popular institutions such as the Spartan ephors emerged from the perceived inefficacy of the models of moral advice developed by Guillaume Budé, Desiderius Erasmus, and Thomas More.
Curing the Patria: Diagnostic History and Law as Medicine in François Hotman's Francogallia
This paper examines François Hotman's turn to constitutional history to provide an institutional explanation for the causes of civil war. It argues that Hotman turned to constitutional history not only for an image of the natural state of the realm but as a tool for identifying deviations in the development of legal institutions (instituenda). This method built on a comparative approach to the study of law developed in his Antitribonian (1567) that rejected the universality of Roman law in favor of a kind of legal particularism and described legislative activity as a medicine that varied in application depending on the body’s formal condition or constitution.
Jean Calvin's 1536 Institutes as a Supplicatory Libellus
This paper explores the legal argument of Jean Calvin's 1536 Institutes of the Christian Religion in light of Guillaume Budé and other legal humanists' writings on law, power, and princely authority. It examines Calvin's use of concepts from Roman law to organize the first edition of the Institutes, reframing Calvin's reflection on resistance as the concluding argument of a legal action.
Teaching
While teaching and studying at Georgetown, I have had the opportunity to serve as instructor of record for Elements of Political Theory (Summer 2023) and to lead discussion sections through five courses in the history of political thought and one course in American government. I am also currently the instructor for The Constitutional Imagination: Between Power and Restraint (Fall 2024), a course designed for the 2024-25 Jill Hopper Memorial Fellowship that seeks to provide students a historical introduction (c. 1500 to present) to key concepts and debates in modern constitutional theory.
My teaching interests lie at the intersection of early modern political thought, constitutional theory & law, and political institutions. I have included links to syllabi below.
Instructor of Record
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Elements of Political Theory - Summer 2023
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The Constitutional Imagination: Between Power and Restraint - Fall 2024
Teaching Assistant
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Political & Social Thought - Spring 2021. Fall 2022. Spring 2023.
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U.S. Political Systems - Spring 2022.
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Elements of Political Theory - Fall 2020. Fall 2021.
Figure of Justice from Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Allegory of Good Government (1338), via Google Arts and Culture.