Samuel Binkley
Professor, School of Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies
As an interdisciplinary scholar with a grounding in the social sciences, Dr. Sam Binkley’s research reflects dialogues with philosophers, historians, and critical psychologists, centered on the social and historical production of subjectivity. Toward this end, he has undertaken studies of neoliberalism and lifestyle literatures, the institutional regulation of racial identities, nationalist affect and emotion, therapeutic cultures, and discourses on madness and mental health.
At the heart of his research is a recurring and unresolved engagement with the work of Michel Foucault. He has authored three research monographs: Against White Interiority: A Racial Critique of Therapeutic Reason (Palgrave 2023); Happiness as Enterprise: An Essay on Neoliberal Life (SUNY 2015) and Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970s (Duke 2008), and is co-editor of A Foucault for the 21st Century (Cambridge Scholars).
Dr. Binkley has published articles in such journals as Body & Society, History of Human Sciences, Culture Theory & Critique, Time and Society, Foucault Studies, Cultural Studies, Rethinking Marxism, Subjectivity, and the Journal for Cultural Research.
Courses
- Key Contemporary Thinkers: Michel Foucault
- Topics in Sociology and Anthropology
- Madness and Modernity
- Honors Pre-Thesis Seminar
- The Storied Life
Academic Work
- 2023, Against White Interiority: A Racial Critique of Therapeutic Reason, Palgrave Macmillan
- 2014, Happiness as Enterprise: An Essay on Neoliberal Life, SUNY Press
- 2007, Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970s, Duke University Press
- 2024, “Opening Up and Going In: Metaphors of Interiority and the Case of Humanistic Psychology,” Journal of Historical Social Research 49: 3.
- 2018, “Biopolitical Metaphor: Habitualized Embodiment Between Discourse and Affect,” Body & Society
- 2016, “Anti-Racism Beyond Empathy: Transformations in the Knowing and Governing of Racial Difference,” Subjectivity 9