Research
Below I try to describe in more detail my research interests, as well as current projects I'm working on. Please feel free to reach out to me to talk about any of these! I'd love to talk for hours about Margaret and/or math!
Research Interests
The Problem of Applied Math
My main question here is how it is that mathematics allows us to navigate the world around us. Over the couple years I've thought about this question, I've been draw to discussions of math as a language, deconstructive questions about the physical/mathematical distinction, and the history of concrete cases of math being applied to the world (see esp Navier-Stokes and mathematical measurement of inbreeding in the 1920s)
Margaret Cavendish
A far more recent addition is my interest in Margaret Cavendish. I find her interesting as a person and as a thinker, given how broadly she wrote across genres and topics in a time when women rarely if ever published, let alone under their own name. I also enjoy thinking about how we can learn about structural injustices in academia by gossiping about Margaret's story (she would have loved that). Read Blazing World.
Queer Theory
My interests in queer theory are somewhat more vague than I would like, but, generally speaking, I am interested in reading queer theory, especially critiques of stable categorization, and applying them to my work in, for example, philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics. I also, however, am slowly getting more and more into actually doing queer theory à la Hoquehghem and Bersani, talking about subjectivity, identity, and politics. I also love Lauren Berlant, José Esteban Muñoz, and bell hooks!
Miscellaneous
Here, I will gather some hot 'n spicy keywords that have popped up across my studies but have not yet congealed into clear directions for research (there are many): pragmatism (especially Rorty and Hacking), phenomenology, historiographical methods, early modern period, critical philosophy, postmodernism (gettin' into Lyotard!), poststructuralism, deconstruction (Derrida time!), genealogies etc....
Works In Progress
"The Physical/Mathematical Distinction: You're Making Things Up Again, Philosophers": In this paper, I'm trying to argue that, in concrete cases of applied mathematics, we should not take for granted a clean distinction between the mathematical and the physical. I argue that this is especially important when it comes to critiquing the state of the debate on "genuinely mathematical explanations" but also has a more general bearing on how we think about applied mathematics' relation to the world. Currently, I'm trying to make the argument with a two-prong strategy: first, using deconstructive strategies from queer theory to emphasize the definitional incoherency/instability of the physical/mathematical distinction; second, arguing that, often, what we think of as "physical concepts" and "mathematical concepts" actually mutually constitute one another in applications of mathematics.
Blurred Temporality: The Synchronic, The Diachronic, and the Chronically Oppressed: My goal in this very-much-work-in-progress isto argue that "synchronic" and "diachronic" should be viewed as lenses through which we try to analyze the temporal mess that is our lived experience. I want to question the utility of the terms "past," "present," and "future," specifically when it comes to activism against systems of oppression. While I want to suggest that this crisscrossing of temporal lines and bounding edges occurs throughout life, I am going to argue for activism as a case in which such entanglement is especially visible, especially necessary, and especially thought. In this paper, I really want to borrow from writings about queer temporarily, as well as drawing on science fiction, notably Octavia Butler's, to talk about this blurring of temporality. I'm honestly not yet sure if this will be an ~academic piece~ or a more run-of-the-mill piece I submit elsewhere.
(shelved for now) "Margaret Cavendish: Disrupting the Dominant Discourse (Then And Now)": In this paper, I'm advocating a specific approach to historiography of marginalized philosophers that has as its aim addressing structural injustices in contemporary academia. As far as fleshing out this method, I try to make some useful comparisons to Pamela VanHaitsma's notion of gossip as queer historiographical method and Critical Race Theory's perspective on historical narrative construction. I then try to apply this sort of method in a preliminary way to Margaret Cavendish's life and struggles to gain acclaim in early modern philosophy. I particularly analyze how she transgressed gender norms for education and genre norms of publication and suggest what we migth bring forward as lessons for how we structure academic philosophy today. (slides from IMCS 2022 conference presentation available on request)
Publications
None yet, but have mercy on me, for I have only just begun graduate school :(
Unpublished/Undergraduate Manuscripts
(Undergraduate Thesis) "What Is 'Applied Mathematics' Anyway? How the History of Fluid Mechanics Demonstrates the Role of Concepts in Applied Mathematics" pdf here
"A Step Toward the Elucidation of Quantitative Laws of Nature" Stance, An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal (Spring 2020) here