Patchen Markell

Patchen Markell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University, where he specializes in political theory and the history of social and political thought. He is also affiliated with Cornell's Institute for European Studies as a Faculty Associate. Markell's academic work primarily focuses on European (particularly German-language), North American, and transatlantic politics, culture, and philosophy from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

His research interests encompass a wide range of topics including the power and limits of democracy, the intersections of geopolitics, capitalism, and racial hierarchy in the postwar world, and the connections between politics, art, aesthetics, and literature. Markell has conducted extensive work on Hegel, Marx, and critical theory beyond the Frankfurt School tradition, with particular expertise in the political thought of Hannah Arendt.

Markell serves as one of the general editors of the new Critical Edition of Arendt's Collected Works, published in hybrid print and digital format by Wallstein Verlag and the Freie Universität Berlin. He has also co-launched a book series titled 'Reading Arendt Today' with DeGruyter Brill. His recent publications explore diverse topics from climate change through an Arendtian lens to feminist political theory and political aesthetics.

Markell is an active educator who teaches courses including 'Introduction to Political Theory,' 'Power and Freedom: Words, Concepts, Politics,' 'Marx's Critique of Capitalism,' and specialized seminars on Arendt and Hobbes's Leviathan. He will serve as a Faculty Fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University during the 2024-2025 academic year while completing his book 'Politics Against Rule' and working on the Critical Edition of 'The Human Condition' and 'Vita Activa.'