Rate My Professor James Martel

Martel's research specializations encompass American and European political theory, legal theory, sovereignty and jurisprudence, anarchist politics and philosophy, Marxist studies, political theology, critical race studies, postcolonial studies, Indigenous studies, Black political thought, gender and sexuality studies, continental philosophy, comparative literature, literary criticism, and cultural studies. He has authored eight books, including Anarchist Prophets: Disappointing Vision and the Power of Collective Sight (Duke University Press, 2022), Unburied Bodies: Subversive Corpses and the Authority of the Dead (Amherst College Press, 2018), The Misinterpellated Subject (Duke University Press, 2017), The One and Only Law: Walter Benjamin and the Second Commandment (University of Michigan Press, 2014), Divine Violence: Walter Benjamin and the Eschatology of Sovereignty (Routledge, 2011), Textual Conspiracies: Walter Benjamin, Idolatry and Political Theory (University of Michigan Press, 2011), Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat (Columbia University Press, 2007), and Love is a Sweet Chain: Desire, Autonomy and Friendship in Liberal Political Theory (Routledge, 2001). He co-edited the Routledge Handbook on Ecological Law and the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2023) and How Not to Be Governed: Readings and Interpretations from a Critical Anarchist Left (Lexington, 2011). Awards include the San Francisco State University Distinguished Service Award (2018) and the James Boyd White Award for lifetime achievement from the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities (2019). Martel teaches courses such as Foundations of Political Theory, Anarchist Political Theory, Political Theories of Authority, and The Political Theory of Franz Kafka. He has served as external examiner for doctoral and master's theses at institutions including UC Santa Cruz, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Birkbeck College School of Law.