Dan Boscov-Ellen

Dan is an environmental political philosopher and ethicist with a background in critical theory. His work focuses primarily on theorizing the ecological dynamics of capitalism and imperialism and explicating the political-theoretical and ethical entailments of these dynamics. His 2021 PhD dissertation, After the Flood: Political Philosophy in the Capitalocene, is a systematic theory of the normative political implications of capitalogenic environmental crisis. His recent articles on related topics have critically interrogated the universalizing discourse of the Anthropocene; worked to correct the capital-blindness and selective historical amnesia of many ethical accounts of responsibility for climate change; and analyzed the ethics of climate migration with a focus on reparative climate justice in the context of colonial oppression and capitalist exploitation. He is currently working on a book, provisionally entitled Climate Ethics in the Real World: Essays on Capitalism, Colonialism, and the Climate Crisis, which will build and expand upon these arguments.

Dan has developed several courses for the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies, including SS-382 Politics of Climate Change, SS-465 Capitalism and Crisis, and SSWI-285G Fascism Then and Now. In each course he teaches, Dan strives to create a welcoming intellectual space that fosters collaborative and critical philosophical reflection and connects philosophical material with current events and students’ lived experiences. His classes also incorporate a diverse array of critical and subaltern perspectives; he believes that the homogeneity of the accepted canon has blinded philosophers to arguments and ways of thinking that are crucial in a world trending toward entrenched ecological apartheid.