Aaron Neber, Author at Public Seminar

Philosophy

What Is a Beagle?

In Lab Dog, Brad Bolman probes how the beagle became such a popular subject of American science and such a potent symbol of American patriotism

April 30, 2026 • by Aaron Neber

In recent months, activists against animal testing in scientific experiments have had a few moments of important success. In December, the National Defense Authorization Act included a provision that military funding will not be spent on projects that require painful research on dogs or cats (unless they are military service ...

Feature

Queers, Zombies, and Institutions

A Review of Lorenzo Bernini’s Queer Apocalypses: Elements of Antisocial Theory

November 21, 2017 • by Aaron Neber

Edelman’s words, published in 2004, may seem an already antiquated sentiment: (many) queers can now marry and fight in American wars; the Pope has ordered Christians to atone for the marginalization of LGBT people; and queer theory is fully lodged in American academia, making its charge for revolution resound less ...

Education

An Interview with Justin Leroy

Racial finance and the question of moral progress

May 24, 2017 • by Narender Strong and Aaron Neber

On Wednesday, March 29th, Justin Leroy, an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Davis, delivered a presentation entitled “Race, Finance, and the Afterlife of Slavery,” as part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the seventy-eighth installment of the longest-running survey of American art. Leroy’s talk, which drew from an article ...

Education

Reading Black Reconstruction Today

April 19, 2017 • by Aaron Neber

My first encounter with W.E.B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in the America came over the same weekend that the US Department of Education, newly under the leadership of Betsy DeVos, tweeted: "Education must not simply teach - it must teach life. -- W.E.B. DeBois". The Education Department's blithe attempt to participate ...

Education

Recognizing One’s Oppression: On Collins’ Emerging Process

May 26, 2016 • by Aaron Neber

This post is part of the Gender and Domination Course in OOPS. The black American woman resides in a conceptual space that exhibits a profound and complex network of interwoven modes of oppression. Throughout “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images” from Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, ...

Recognizing One’s Oppression: On Collins’ Emerging Process

Education

Creating Compliant Subjects

What is permitted by whom?

February 29, 2016 • by Aaron Neber

This post is in relation to the Gender and Domination course in OOPS. Reading excerpts from Spinzoa’s Theological-Political Treatise, I am reminded of one of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s fundamental anxieties in The Brothers Karamazov, namely, that without the presence of God “everything is permitted.” Perhaps an even more apt quotation would be Dmitri Karamazov’s ...