Rate My Professor Anita Chari

Anita Chari is Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2008, with a dissertation titled The Reification of the Political: Critical Theory and Postcapitalist Politics, advised by Patchen Markell, Lisa Wedeen, and Moishe Postone. She also holds an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2003 and a B.A. in Philosophy and Government from Georgetown University in 2001, graduating with High Honors and Phi Beta Kappa. Before joining the University of Oregon as Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science in September 2011, Chari served as Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago from 2008 to 2011. Her teaching experience includes instructing core courses in social and political thought, feminism and historical materialism, and gender studies at the University of Chicago.

Chari's research focuses on political theory, critical theory from the Frankfurt School and Western Marxism, neoliberalism, reification, critique, and the political significance of embodiment practices, somatics, contemplative studies, and contemporary art. Her book A Political Economy of the Senses: Neoliberalism, Reification, Critique was published by Columbia University Press in the New Directions in Critical Theory series in 2015. In 2024, she published A User's Manual to Claire Fontaine with Lenz Press. Forthcoming works include contributions to Contemporanea: A Glossary of the XXI Century (MIT Press, 2024) and Bodies in Politics: Explorations in Somaesthetics and Somapower (Brill, 2024). Selected peer-reviewed articles comprise 'The Political Potential of Mindful Embodiment' in New Political Science (2016), 'The Embodiment of Conscience' in Philosophy and Social Criticism (2016), and 'Toward a Political Critique of Reification: Lukács, Honneth, and the Aims of Critical Theory' in Philosophy & Social Criticism (2010). Her art criticism and experimental writing appear in Flash Art, Claire Fontaine: Newsfloor (Walter König, 2020), The Hysterical Material (University of Chicago Press, 2017), and Twentieth Century Hustlers (Cleveland Museum of Art, 2020). Chari has received the Grodzins Prize from the University of Chicago Department of Political Science (2005), a DAAD Dissertation Research Fellowship (2006-2007), an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2007-2008), and Junior Faculty Professional Development Grants from the University of Oregon. She is co-founder of Embodying Your Curriculum™, which integrates embodiment practices into higher education, and holds certifications in somatic training including Embodiment Process Foundational Training (2016) and Continuum Wellsprings Practitioner Training (2014). Chari teaches courses such as Introduction to Political Theory, graduate seminars in political theory, and honors courses on autobiography as political agency.