Lecturer Chase Hobbs-Morgan

I was trained as a political theorist, which instilled in me the importance of highlighting what Sheldon Wolin once called the "presence of the past" in our contemporary social, cultural, political, spatial, and economic institutions. Much of my work as a teacher and scholar grapples with the presence of the past in order to imagine and enact more just futures. In my teaching I aim to help students think strategically and critically about how to respond to contemporary injustice by helping them understand the political and material forces that shaped the places that surround us, formed the institutions that contain us, and set the stage for the injustices (environmental, racial, and otherwise) that concern us. In my research I aim to theorize and document resources with which democratic citizens (where 'citizen' refers to engaged members of society rather than denoting a formally recognized legal status) can creatively respond to the contemporary ill-effects of environmentally destructive forces that connect past to present: capitalism, colonialism, and beyond.