Rafi Youatt
Associate Professor of Politics
Email
youattr@newschool.edu
Office Location
D - 6 East 16th Street
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Profile
**On leave Spring 2025**
Rafi Youatt is Associate Professor of Global Politics at NSSR and Lang College. He is the author of Interspecies Politics: Nature, Borders, States (2020) and Counting Species: Biodiversity in Global Environmental Politics (2015). He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on international relations, anthropocentrism, ecology, and mobility. His current research project studies the historical relationships between ground and collective political violence in a trio of imperial and post-imperial borderlands.
Recent courses include Political Space; Planetary Politics; Interpretive Methods; Empires, Nations, Borderlands; and War in the 20th Century. He currently co-coordinates the Global Politics Workshop at NSSR Politics, and was formerly associate editor of the Journal of International Relations and Development.
Degrees Held
PhD 2007, University of Chicago, Political Science
MA 2001, University of Chicago, Committee on International Relations
BA 1997, University of California, Berkeley, Political Science
Recent Publications
BOOKS
Interspecies Politics: Nature, States, Borders (University of Michigan Press, 2020).
Counting Species: Biodiversity in Global Environmental Politics. University of Minnesota Press, (2015).
SELECTED ARTICLES and CHAPTERS
'Anthropocentrism and Democracy in Planetary Times,' Public Seminar (2023), also reprinted in Eurozine.
'Walking the International.' International Politcal Sociology. (2022).
'The Moving Walkway is Ending: A Speculative Essay on Climate-Driven Species Mobility and Planetary Politics.' Borderlands (2022).
'Intersecting Mobilities: Between the Autonomy of Movement and the Power of Place' (with Miriam Ticktin). Borderlands, (2022), introduction to special issue.
'Interspecies Politics and the Global Rat: Ecology, Extermination, Experiment.' Review of International Studies. (2022)
'Ecologies of Globalization: Mountain Governance and Multinatural Planetary Politics.' in J. Pereira and A Saramago, eds. Nonhuman Nature and World Politics: Theory and Practice. (2020)
'Anthropocentrism and the Politics of the Living' in Eroukhmanoff, C. and M. Harker, eds. Reflections on the Posthuman in International Relations: The Anthropocene, Security, and Ecology. (2017)
'Images Unwalled: Walls of Water' with Multiple Mobilities Research Cluster. Anthropology Now. (2017)
‘Personhood and the Rights of Nature: The New Subjects of Contemporary Earth Politics’, International Political Sociology. (2017)
‘Sovereignty and the Wolves of Isle Royale.’ In Political Theory and the Animal-Human Relationship. Grant, J. and V. Jungkunz, eds. (SUNY Press, April 2016).
‘Interspecies.’ Entry for Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. Gabrielson, T., Hall, C., Meyer, J., and Schlosberg, D., eds. (Oxford University Press, 2016).
‘Interspecies Relations, International Relations: Rethinking Anthropocentric Politics.’ Millennium Journal of International Studies. 43(1) (2014), pp. 207-223.
‘Pain, Power, and the Interspecies Politics of Foie Gras.’ Political Research Quarterly. 65(2), (2012), pp. 346-358.
‘Counting Species: Biopower and the Global Biodiversity Census.’ Environmental Values. (2008). 17(3), pp. 393-417.