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Welcome! I am Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of the South. I am affiliated faculty in the Department of African & African American Studies as well as in the Sewanee Integrated Program in the Environment (SIPE). Previously, I was Perry-Williams Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy and Political Science at the College of Wooster, a position facilitated by the Consortium for Faculty Diversity. I received my Ph.D. in political theory from the University of Notre Dame (2019) and my B.A. from the Honors College at the University of Houston (2014).

My work is primarily on late modern and contemporary political thought, continental philosophy, and critical theory. I teach courses on the history of political thought from the ancients through the postmoderns as well as on various topics in contemporary political theory (e.g. punishment and mass incarceration, post- and decolonial theory, African-American political thought, critical theory, environmental political theory, loneliness and alienation, etc.).

My research has appeared or is forthcoming in the scholarly journals Antipode, Constellations, Contemporary Political Theory, European Journal of Political Theory, International Relations, Philosophy & Literature, Philosophy & Social Criticism, and Theory & Event. Additionally, I have reviewed academic books in History of Political Thought, Political Theology, Review of Politics and Thesis Eleven as well as written on the intersection of pop culture and philosophy in Black Mirror and Philosophy and The Expanse and Philosophy. I am editor of two critical companions to Herbert Marcuse entitled The Marcusean Mind and Creolizing Marcuse and am currently preparing a book manuscript on genealogy in critical social theory for publication.

You can contact me at sisimpso@sewanee.edu.