Rafi Youatt
Associate Professor of Politics
Email
youattr@newschool.edu
Office Location
D - Albert & Vera List Academic Center - 6 East 16th Street
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Profile
Rafi Youatt is associate professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research. His main areas of research are global politics and international relations, particularly on questions relating to environment, ecology, anthropocentrism, and the politics of the human. His forthcoming book, Interspecies Politics: Nature, States, Borders (University of Michigan Press, 2020), argues that that international politics is in fact a form of interspecies politics, one that involves the interactions, ideas, and practices of multiple species, both human and nonhuman, to generate differences and violences, and to create commonalities and affiliations. His first book was Counting Species: Biodiversity in Global Environmental Politics, published with University of Minnesota Press in 2015.
His work has been widely published in journals including Millennium, International Political Sociology, Political Research Quarterly, and Environmental Values. (See here for PDFs).
Collaborations at the New School include the Multiple Mobilities Research Group; he also co-convenes the Global Politics Workshop, dedicated to discussion of work in-progress by graduate students and faculty. He is currently Director of Graduate Studies for Politics, and was previously chair of the university-wide Environmental Studies program.
Willing to supervise doctoral projects in critical international relations, global environmental politics, and multispecies politics; and experimental, eclectic, and free-thinking projects willing to speak directly to key questions in global politics.
New projects include a study of the relation of terrain to collective political violence; a short book on the politics of walking; and an ongoing project on the global rat.
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
Counting Species: Biodiversity in Global Environmental Politics. University of Minnesota Press, (2015).
ARTICLES/CHAPTERS
'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.
Current Courses
Directed Dissertation Study
Field Seminar Global Politics
Independent Study
Political Research Seminar
War