Phillip Pinell
Position title: Ph.D. Candidate: Political Theory and American Politics
Email: pinell@wisc.edu
Website | CV
Research Interests
Iberian and Latin American Political Thought, Memory, Identity, Nationalism, Liberalism/Illiberalism, Citizenship Studies
Dissertation: Memory Politics: The Contested Past as an Aid to Liberty
Biography
Phillip Pinell is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation explores the appeals to the memory of the Spanish Golden Age in late 19th and early 20th century Spanish political thought as an avenue for developing a shared sense of national identity. He has written chapters on Miguel de Unamuno, José Ortega y Gasset, and María Zambrano.
His other research includes pieces about memory and identity in the works of Jefferson and Tocqueville, as well as studies on the Stoic philosopher Epictetus and the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and their relevance for contemporary debates in liberal and democratic theory. His work has been published in Political Research Quarterly, American Political Thought, The Political Science Reviewer, and The European Legacy.
Peer-reviewed Publications
Pinell, Phillip. “Tocqueville and Democratic Historical Consciousness,” The European Legacy. Forthcoming, 2024.
Pinell, Phillip. “Nostalgia for Empire? José Ortega y Gasset, Memory, and ‘The Spanish Problem’”, The Political Science Reviewer, 48(2) (2024).
Pinell, Phillip. “How a People Becomes a People: Memory and Identity in Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia,” American Political Thought, 13(3) (2024), 371-394.
Pinell, Phillip. “Does Artificial Intelligence Speak Our Language?: A Gadamerian Assessment of Generative Language Models,” Political Research Quarterly, 77(3) (2024), 713-728.
Pinell, Phillip. “Thinking and Political Considerations: Gnômê in the Stoic Political Philosophy of Epictetus,” The Political Science Reviewer, 48(1) (2024), 87-112.
Courses Taught
Deception and Politics (POLI SCI 463), Spring 2023, Fall 2023
Critical Thinking and Expression: Arguments in Political Rhetoric (ILS 200), Fall 2022
- Honored Instructor Award from UW-Madison Housing
Areas of Teaching Competence
American Political Thought and Development, The American Presidency/American Politics, Public Speaking, Deception and Politics, History of Political Thought, Ancient and Continental Political Thought
Awards
UW-Madison Academic Fellowship, 2020-2021, 2024
UW-Madison Summer Funding Fellowship, 2021