Professional and Biographical Information

Fields of Interest

Critical Theory
Modern European Political Theory
Medical & Health Humanities

Education

Ph.D., Political Science and Critical Theory, University of California, Berkeley

Current Research

My book, Addiction Becomes Normal: On the Late-Modern American Subject, has been published by the University of Chicago Press. This book examines how addiction has been reimagined as a normal feature of human nature and experience in much of American science, medicine, and politics over the last forty years. It argues that this change involves a radical rethinking of what it means to be human, and asks who or what the subject is, and how it can be governed, if we are all now or potentially addicts.

I continue to work on topics that link the history of medicine to questions in political theory. I am currently thinking and writing about the phenomenon of palliative psychiatry.

Courses Taught

Plato and Rousseau

Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

Twentieth-Century Visions: Beauvoir, Fanon, Marcuse, Foucault

Science and Politics: Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour

Existentialism (First Year Seminar)


*Professor Park will transition to a tenure-track appointment at the college in July 2024.