Facilitators
We are very fortunate to have the following facilitators join us (arranged alphabetically):
Akilesh Ayyar
Brooklyn, New York
Areas of Specialization: Advaita Vedanta; jurisprudence; psychology; psychoanalysis; Proust. Seminar: How to Find What Isn’t Lost
Ulrich Baer
New York University
Professor of German and Comparative Literature
Areas of Specialization: German literature; poetry; poetics; Rilke; Baudelaire; continental philosophy; photography; trauma. Seminars: • Rilke’s Poetics of Immanence • Lying & Truth in Politics: Hannah Arendt and the Fragility of Democratic Life • For Our Present Moment: James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time
Rich Blint
The New School
Assistant professor of Literature, director of the program in Race and Ethnicity, and affiliate faculty in Gender Studies.
Areas of Specialization: American and African American literature and culture; the life and work of James Baldwin; race, gender, and contemporary visuality; postcolonialism and diaspora; urban life and politics in the context of the global. Seminar: For Our Present Moment: James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time
Thomas Conners
University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Studies
Areas of Specialization: theories of affect, queer theory, and Latin American and Latinx literature. Seminar: Don’t Worry. Be Happy! Feeling Good, Bad, and Everything in Between
Daniel Denvir
Host of “The Dig,” a Jacobin magazine podcast
Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Areas of Specialization: contemporary politics, immigration, criminal justice. Seminar: Empire of Xenophobia: The Long Political History of Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” Wall
Amir Eshel
Stanford University
Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies
Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature
Areas of Specialization: contemporary literature and the arts as they touch on philosophy, specifically on memory, history, political thought, and ethics. Seminar: Lying & Truth in Politics: Hannah Arendt and the Fragility of Democratic Life
Patricia Gherovici
Philadelphia Lacan Group
Psychoanalyst in private practice
Areas of Specialization: Lacanian psychoanalysis; transgenderism; race, class, and the unconscious; psychoanalysis and comedy. Seminar: Please Select Your Jacques Lacan
Marisa Holmes
Brooklyn, NY
Organizer, Filmmaker, and Educator
Areas of Specialization: Sociology of media, critical theory, networks, the public sphere, anarchism. Seminar: Mutual Aid: How to Survive the Crisis
Cleo McNelly Kearns
Dartmouth College, Visiting Scholar
Areas of Specialization: continental philosophy, comparative religion, western literature, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, shamanism and sacrifice. Seminar: • Ritual and Resistance • Sacrifice, Debt & Grief • Sacrifice, Gender & Eros
Steven Koteff
Philadelphia, PA
Areas of Specialization:
Seminar: Reality Beyond Realism: Storytelling for/versus Enlightenment
Brooke Lavelle
Courage of Care Coalition
Areas of Specialization: Buddhist studies; cognitive science; contemplative theory; anti-oppressive pedagogy; social justice; educational equity. Seminar: Critical and Contemplative Pedagogies for Eco-Justice
Cindy Milstein
Institute for Anarchist Studies
Author, organizer, activist
Areas of Specialization: Creating autonomous spaces of resistance, reconstruction, and education. Seminars: • Anarchism and its Aspirations • Viral Grief, Rebellious Mourning
Lisa Miracchi
University of Pennsylvania
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Areas of Specialization: Mind, epistemology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, action and practice, feminism, language. Seminar: How Living Well Matters In the Pursuit of Knowledge
Philip Murphy
Buddhist Action Coalition NYC
Animal Rebellion NYC
Areas of Specialization: practitioner of Theravada Buddhism; former director at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, the Insight Mediation Center of the Pioneer Valley (Easthampton, MA), and New York Insight Meditation Center; founding member of the Buddhist Action Coalition NYC; co-founder of the New York City chapter of climate and animal justice organization Animal Rebellion. Seminar: Total Liberation: The Buddhist Eight-Fold Path, Animal Justice, and Liberatory Praxis
Matthew O’Connell
Imperfect Buddha Podcast
O’Connell Coaching
Areas of Specialization: Buddhism; non-buddhism; shamanism; critical thinking skills. Seminar: Rethinking Practice at the Great Feast
John Paetsch
Temple University
Areas of Specialization: Continental philosophy; Deleuze; Bergson; philosophy of time; poetics; poetry. Seminars: • The Noise of Time • Gilles Deleuze: Larval Subjects, Lost Time • “Exhausting All Possibilities:” An Introduction to Deleuze & Guattari’s Political Philosophy
Joshua Ramey
Haverford College
Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights
Areas of Specialization: Contemporary continental philosophy; critical social theory; political economy; political theology; Gilles Deleuze; non-philosophy. Seminars: • Money and Metaphysics Why the Debt Strike is Not Impossible • Debt Strike Now? • Debt as Original Sin
Scott Ritner
Temple University
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Areas of Specialization: Political theory; critical theory; Simone Weil; Marxian political thought; political philosophy; political theology. Seminar: Revolutionary Pessimism: On Political Action Without Expectation
Richard Robbins
SUNY Plattsburgh
Professor of Anthropology
Areas of Specialization: global problems, utopian societies, Indigenous peoples of North America, comparative religion, and activist anthropology. Seminar: Debt Strike Now?
Gabriel Rockhill
Villanova University
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Areas of Specialization: Modern and contemporary philosophy; social and political thought; aesthetics; social theory; cultural history and historiography; literary and film theory; ethics; psychoanalysis. Seminars: • Contemporary French Philosophy: A Primer • Aesthetics: Toward a Radical History • Why Marx Matters
Pierce Salguero
Penn State, Abington College
Associate Professor of Asian Studies
Areas of Specialization: History of medicine; Buddhist studies; Asian religions; cultural exchange; Thai massage. Seminar: Speculum of Pain: Buddhism on Illness
Devin Singh
Dartmouth College
Associate Professor of Religion
Areas of Specialization: religion, philosophy, ethics, organizational dynamics, and the connections among religion, economics, and politics. Seminar: Debt Strike Now?
Natalia Smirnov
Writer, Researcher, Learning Experience Designer
Areas of Specialization: Prefigurative pedagogy, post-capitalism, play as liberation. Groups: Ludic Liberation Lab
Judith Suissa
Professor of Philosophy of Education
UCL Institute of Education, London, UK
Areas of Specialization: Political and moral philosophy, with a focus on anarchist theory; questions of social justice; radical and libertarian educational traditions; utopian theory; the role of the state, and the parent-child relationship. Seminar: Learning in the Crisis: On Rediscovering “the Social” in the Midst of a Pandemic
Anthony Paul Smith
La Salle University
Associate Professor of Philosophical Theology
Areas of Specialization: continental philosophy; non-philosophy; philosophical theology; religious studies; scientific ecology. Seminar: Alienation and Its Antidotes: On the Thought of François Laruelle
AK Thompson
Ithaca College
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Areas of Specialization: Walter Benjamin; social movements and social change; social theory; activism; politics; aesthetics; anti-capitalism. Seminars: • The Culture of Revolt • Black Bloc/White Riot • Confronting the Demobilizing Wall of Uncertainty
Glenn Wallis
Incite Seminars
Areas of Specialization: non-buddhism; non-philosophy; Buddhism; educational theory; anarchism; ideological critique; ritual studies; contemplative theory and practice. Seminars: See “Who we are”
Zack Walsh
Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, A Mindset for the Anthropocene, Potsdam, Germany; Ph.D. candidate in process studies at Claremont School of Theology
Areas of Specialization: process studies; contemplative studies; engaged Buddhism; critical theory; radical ecology; post-capitalism; and China. Seminar: Critical and Contemplative Pedagogies for Eco-Justice
Alexander Wilson
Institute of Research and Innovation, Paris, France
Areas of Specialization: philosophy of science, technology, and aesthetics conversing with cultural studies, environmental humanities, art, and media theory. Seminar: How We Remained Human: Posthumans, the Technosphere, and the Selfish Meme
