Biography-Santa Barbara- former

Ezekiel Goggin was a dissertation fellow during the inaugural year of the International Center for the Humanities and Social Change at the University of Santa Barbara (2017-2018).  During his time at UCSB, Goggin worked on issues pertaining to the rhetorical use of “fake news,” the relationship of media and mediation to the formation of publics, and the psychology of self-deception. Goggin also took part in the 2018 Summer Institute of the Humanities and Social Change Foundation at Universitá Ca’ Foscari, Venice, where he presented an essay entitled “The Limits of Conviction: Hegel and Weber on the Possibilities of Modern Community.” During his time as a fellow he completed a draft of his dissertation the theme of sacrifice in the philosophy of GWF Hegel. Broadly speaking, Goggin’s research focuses on the relationship between religious imagination and modern accounts of human freedom –particularly at the intersection of German idealism, phenomenology, and theology.  He is also interested in deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and critical theory.  His work has been supported by the University of Chicago Divinity School, the Udo-Keller-Stiftung Forum Humanum, and the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion.

Jan was a dissertation fellow at the Center in Santa Barbara in 2017/18. As a Fellow, he completed and defended his dissertation and earned a Ph.D. in Politics from the New School for Social Research. Jan is a political economist whose research focuses on the relationship between corporate capitalism, political power, and public debates about ethics and values. His current book project traces how the American meat industry seeks to produce an animal that best suits market conditions – as biological animal, financial security, object of social imagination, and subject of political contestation – from conception through consumption. This work sheds light on the tensions and interrelations between market valuation, the value of life itself, and social values in the late-liberal, not-quite-post-industrial United States. Jan’s research has been supported by a Doctoral Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), an Ira Katznelson Dissertation Fellowship from the New School for Social Research, a Human-Animal Studies Fellowship at Wesleyan University, and a Graduate Student Fellowship at the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.