areas of research interest:
Spinoza, Early Modern Philosophy,
History of Metaphysics

dissertation title:
"Spinoza on Substance as Cause"

dissertation committee:
Yitzhak Melamed, Johns Hopkins University (co-chair)
Arnold Davidson, University of Chicago (co-chair)
Charles Larmore, Brown University
Steven Nadler, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Monism & Thought in Spinoza's Metaphysics"
conference paper, New England Colloquium in Early Modern Philosophy, Harvard University, 05.09.

"Ends, God & Time in Spinoza's Philosophy"
invited talk, University of Toronto, 02.09

"On the Reality of Finite Things in Spinoza's Metaphysics"
presentation at the History of Philosophy Roundtable, UC San Diego, 01.09

"On Formal Cause in Spinoza: In the Footsteps of Descartes & Arnauld",
conference paper, Leiden-Duke Workshop on Early Modern Philosophy, Leiden University, the Netherlands, 09.08.

"Spinoza, Hobbes and Rhetoric”,
presentation at the History of Philosophy Roundtable, UC San Diego, 05.08

Emotion and Cognition in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy,
invited conference participant, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 05.08

"Spinoza's Two Ethics and Petrus Ramus",
presentation at the Early Modern Philosophy Workshop, University of Chicago, 04.08

"Reason and Passions in Spinoza’s Philosophy”,
comments, Conference on Spinoza’s Psychology, the American Philosophical Association 2008 Pacific Division Meeting, 03.08

"On the Nature of Divine Power in Spinoza’s Philosophy”,
conference paper, Pacific Northwest-Western Canada Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, University of Washington, 02.08

“Causality and Temporality in Spinoza’s Philosophy”,
conference paper, Southwest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, San Francisco, State University, 02.08

"Spinoza’s Causal Conception of Essence”,
conference paper, Southeast Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, University of South Florida, 11.07

"Spinozism in Recent French Philosophy: Deleuze on Spinoza's Ethics",
presentation, Contemporary European Philosophy Workshop, University of Chicago, 05.07.

"What Can a Creature Do: Appetite, Mechanism & God in Spinoza's Ethics",
presentation at the Early Modern Philosophy Workshop, University of Chicago, 04.07.

"Spinoza on Teleology”,
presentation with Yitzhak Melamed, Spinoza Day, Princeton University, 01.07.

"Spinoza on Human Ends: On the Nature of the First Appendix”,
conference paper, Oxford Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, Oxford, England, 10.06.

“A Spinozistic Future of Philosophy”,
conference paper, Fordham Philosophical Society’s conference, “The Future of Philosophy”, Fordham University, 03.06.

"Spinoza’s Theory of Ideas",
comments, American Philosophical Association Central Division 2006 Meeting, 04.06.