Dr. Samir Gandesha
Ph.D, MA (York), BA (UBC)
Assistant Professor, Modern European Thought and Culture

Research and Teaching Interests

• 19th and 20th Century Social and Political Thought
• Critical Theory
• Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment
• Art, Aesthetics and the Political
• Modernism and Postmodernism

Brief Autobiography

I earned by BA at the University of British Columbia in International Relations, and my MA and PhD in political science at York University. I spent my junior year studying at the London School of Economics and Political Science and took up a SSHRCC Post-doctoral Fellowship at UC Berkeley where I was hosted by Martin Jay in the History Department. In from September, 2001 to December, 2003, I was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in the Institut für Philosophie, Universität Potsdam where I was hosted by Christoph Menke.

I have presented my research at universities in Canada, the United States, Europe and Brazil. My essays and reviews have appeared in Theory and Society, The Semiotic Review of Books, Philosophy and Social Criticism, The European Legacy, Theory, Culture and Society, Topia, Philosophy in Review, Political Theory, The European Journal of Social Theory; New German Critique as well as in a number of edited books. I have also written cultural and art criticism for Fuse, Borderlines, Canadian Dimension and Art Papers Magazines.

I'm currently at work with my colleague Professor Kathy Mezei developing a Master's program in Humanities to be tentatively inaugurated in September, 2008. I would be happy to supervise graduate students in contemporary social and political theory, with special emphasis on the philosophy of art and culture, as well as in the history of political theory.