Essays, articles, and public writing

The Theology of Tech Bros

Traces the intellectual genealogy from Schmitt and Girard through Thiel's network and its effects on contemporary politics and geopolitics. Proposal complete.

Secularizing Moral Motivation: The Durkheimians' Forgotten Project

Examines the Durkheimian school's attempt to account for moral motivation without recourse to theological authority — and argues that both Durkheim's and Mauss' solutions remain structurally indebted to the theological frameworks they claimed to have superseded.

We May Be Sacrificing Our Children to the God of the Gun

On the language of sacrifice in American gun culture — and why it isn't actually a god demanding the deaths.

Sovereignty and Sacrifice

Contribution to the "Theologies of American Exceptionalism" web forum.

Regulating Symbols: The Burkini and Niqab Bans in France

On the specific theological structure of French secularism and the burkini controversy.

To Get the Hebdo Cartoons You Must Get Laïcité

Why French laïcité isn't simply the American idea of church-state separation in translation.

Greece Must Suffer for Redemption: A Nietzschean Reading

The Eurozone debt-crisis rhetoric read through Nietzsche's account of guilt and redemption.

"The 'Force in the Thing': Mauss' Non-Authoritarian Ethics in The Gift"

On Marcel Mauss's subversion of Augustinian moral psychology and his vision of sociality without authority.

"The General Will Beyond Rousseau: Sieyès' Theological Arguments for the Sovereignty of the Revolutionary National Assembly"

On how Sieyès' justification of the Assembly's authority redeploys an ecclesiological argument rather than simply secularizing Rousseau.

"Re-imagining the Public Sphere: Malebranche, Schmitt's Hamlet, and the Lost Theatre of Sovereignty"

On Schmitt's reading of Hamlet and its implications for the theory of political representation.

"Secularization and Sovereignty: Shifts in the Politics-Theology Relation"

In Images of Sovereignty, ed. Neil Walker and Bas Leijssenaar.

"The Study of Religion and the Limits of Transparency"

In Irreverence and the Sacred: Essays in Honor of Bruce Lincoln, ed. Hugh Urban and Gregory B. Johnson.

"Myths of France, Periodization, and Sovereign Power"

In Fabricating Difference, ed. Steven Ramey.

"Justificatory Arguments Theological and Political: Two Senses of 'Secularization'"

In Herrschaftsordnung und Religion, ed. Therese Schwager.

"Permutations of the Theological-Political Analogy"

In Fragments of Religion: Sacred and Secular Agency in Early Modern France, ed. Sanja Perovic.

Review: David Martin, Religion and Power

Review: G. K. Noyer (ed.), Voltaire's Revolution

Review: Victoria Kahn, The Future of Illusion

Review: The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics, ed. Griffin, Mallett, and Tortorice

Teaching in the Aftermath

On pedagogy after the 2016 election — and the pedagogy of listening.

Beyond Expertise: Modeling Learning in an Undergraduate Classroom

On teaching outside your specialization and making your own learning visible to students.

Emotion and Teaching Religion

On emotion, teaching, and the limits of the purely rational classroom.