Visiting Speakers

Miguel de Beistegui was educated in France (BA, MA in Philosophy at the Sorbonne), the US (Ph.D., Loyola University of Chicago), and Germany (Postdoc, Hegel-Archiv, Bochum). He specializes in 20th century German and French philosophy, and has published books and articles in the following areas: ontology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics and politics.

Diogo Sardinha is the President of the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris where he also heads the research program "Violence and Politics" (2010-2016). He studied philosophy at Lisbon (B.A. 1997) and at Paris-Nanterre (M.A. 1999, Ph.D 2005) before continuing his research in São Paulo and Berlin.

Sunil Agnani holds a joint appointment as an Associate Professor with the Department of English and the Department of History, and teaches courses on the European Enlightenment, eighteenth-century British and French literature and thought, and on the literature of empire and decolonization.

Dohra Ahmad has been teaching at St. John’s University since 2004, having received her PhD from Columbia University that same year. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in twentieth- and twenty-first century postcolonial and world Anglophone literature, postcolonial theory, World Literature pedagogy, American and ethnic American literature, and utopian fiction.

Siraj Ahmed (Associate Professor, Department of English; Director, Program in Comparative Literature) received his B.A. in English and Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. He is the author of The Stillbirth of Capital: Enlightenment Writing and Colonial India (Stanford University Press, 2012

Fiamma Arditi is an Italian writer and journalist who lives and works in New York. She writes for the Italian daily paper La Stampa and recently published the book, Buongiorno Palestina with Fazi Editore. In 2008, she founded “Senza Frontiere-Without Borders,” an international film festival dedicated to films and documentaries that seek to embrace our common humanity.

David Armitage, MA, PhD, CorrFRSE, FRHistS, FAHA, is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History and Chair (2012-14, 2015-16) of the Department of History at Harvard University, where he teaches intellectual history and international history. He is also an Affiliated Professor in the Harvard Department of Government, an Affiliated Faculty Member at Harvard Law School and an Honorary Professor of History at the University of Sydney. He is on leave for the academic year 2014-15.

Ellis Avery is the author of two novels, a memoir, and a book of poetry. Her most recent novel, The Last Nude (Riverhead 2012) was inspired by the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka and is set in 1920s Paris. She teaches fiction writing at Columbia University and lives in New York City.  Website: ellisavery.com.