Professor Brown’s fields of interest include the history of political theory, nineteenth and twentieth century Continental theory, critical theory, and cultural theory (including feminist theory, critical race theory, and postcolonial theory). She is best known for intertwining the insights of Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Frankfurt School theorists, Foucault, and contemporary Continental philosophers to critically interrogate formations of power, political identity, citizenship, and political subjectivity in contemporary liberal democracies. Brown’s current work focuses on the relationship of political sovereignty to global capital and other transnational forces, including those associated with religion, law, culture and moral discourse.
Professor Brown received her Ph.D in Political Philosophy from Princeton University in 1983. Prior to coming to Berkeley in 1999, she taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz and at Williams College. Her work has been translated into more than 15 languages. She lectures around the world, has held a number of distinguished visiting lectureships, and has recently been a Senior Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a UC President’s Humanities Fellow.
PhD, Princeton
Western political theory (early modern through 20th century), contemporary Continental theory, critical theory, neoliberalism
