Expertise
Social and Political Philosophy (Modern and Contemporary); The Politics of Identity; Bio-Politics; New Materialism; Animal Studies; Feminist Political Theory; Democratic Theory; American Political Development
Biography
Professor Melonas is an Assistant Professor - Instructional in Temple University's Department of Political Science. His research considers the ramifications of the study of the political subject being freed from the two opposed extremes of biologism and social constructivism because, ultimately, it/he/she/? is both a biological creature and capable of becoming. Without discounting the usefulness of social constructivism to challenge what were profoundly problematic dogmas, particularly biologism, his scholarship explores how the thesis itself has now become so hegemonic that it is shutting down critical analysis rather than stimulating it.
Selected Publications
Peer-Reviewed Publications
- Desireé Melonas and Alex Melonas, “Theorizing Soil: Grounded and Engaged Projects of Racial Terror Memorialization,” in the Oxford Handbook on Grounded and Engaged Political Theory, Brooke Ackerly et al. (Eds.), Forthcoming 2024
- Special Issue on Samantha Frost’s Biocultural Creatures, Theory and Event, Edited, Introduced, and Contributed to by Alex Melonas, 2018:
- https://muse.jhu.edu/article/690529
- https://muse.jhu.edu/article/690535 - Alex Melonas, ‘Thinking Philosophical Anthropology Through the Natural Sciences’, New Political Science, 2017: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07393148.2017.1379238
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
- Desireé Melonas and Alex Melonas, ‘Why We Forget’, Black Issues in Philosophy, 2020: https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/06/09/why-we-forget/?fbclid=IwAR2Mj0gTPIv3Wek78fZ-B189NUw8N1nMWvP0xMhuYrYbkmNYp8slJ1d-1qI
- Alex Melonas, ‘A Review Essay of Ferit Guven’s Decolonizing Democracy: Intersections of Philosophy and Postcolonial Theory’, Contemporary Political Theory, 2015: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fs41296-017-0135-x
Courses Taught
- Introduction to Political Philosophy
- The Politics of Identity in America
- The History and Significance of Race and Ethnicity in America
- Democracy, Socialism, and Capitalism
- American State and Local Politics
- The Politics of Inequality
- American Political Thought
- The Making of American Society
- Mosaic: Humanities SEM I