Sabeen Ahmed
Assistant Professor
Philosophy
Peace & Conflict Studies
Contact
My teaching and research take as their starting assumption that empire—which takes the form of white supremacist racial capitalism—is the defining political and existential problem of modernity, and the discipline of philosophy has historically been (and continues to be) responsive to and implicated in this imperial reality. I thus approach the study of philosophy from a historical and material lens that takes the positionality of philosophers (as well as our positionality as readers) as fundamental for understanding the social and political stakes of philosophical texts and themes. My pedagogy and scholarship are grounded in decolonial, antiracist, and anti-imperialist commitments that bring global and historically marginalized perspectives to bear on the texts and media with which we engage in and outside of the classroom.
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION: Political Philosophy of Race; Philosophy of Law; Colonial/Imperial Studies; Foucault
AREAS OF COMPETENCE: Ancient and Medieval philosophy; Marx; 20th-Century Continental Philosophy; Critical Phenomenology
EDUCATION:
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, Nashville, TN
Ph.D. Philosophy, Provost’s Graduate Fellow
Dissertation: “Coloniality and the Racial Ontopolitics of Law: Foucault’s Juridical Power Reconsidered”
Dissertation Committee: Idit Dobbs-Weinstein (chair), Lucius Outlaw, Jr., Paul C. Taylor, Kelly Oliver, Falguni Sheth
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, Charlottesville, VA
B.A. Philosophy (High Distinction), Spanish
Thesis: “Reason and Revelation in the Foundational Political Philosophy of Abu Nasr al-Farabi”
Thesis Adviser: Daniel T. Devereux Ahmed
