Faculty

Profile

Rafi Youatt is Associate Professor of Global Politics, and currently Director of Graduate Studies. He is the author of Counting Species: Biodiversity in Global Environmental Politics (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) and Interspecies Politics: Nature, Borders, States (University of Michigan Press, 2020). He has also written numerous journal articles on international relations, anthropocentrism, ecology,  and mobility. Recent courses include Planetary Politics; Intersecting Mobilities; Empires, Nations, Borderlands; and War in the 20th Century. He is currently associate editor of the Journal of International Relations and Development and co-coordinates the Global Politics Workshop at NSSR.  His current research project studies the relationship of terrain and collective political violence, in a series of imperial borderlands

Degrees Held

PhD 2007, University of Chicago, Political Science (International Relations) 

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

'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.