Dr. Althea Rani Sircar is a political theorist who works on questions of embodiment, identity, suffering, and community. Her research focuses on how affective experiences shape political subjectivity, identity, and difference, including issues around race, ethnicity, (non-)religious belief, and gender. She is currently writing on cinematic images of racialized subjectivity, phenomenological theories of human and non-human life, and on affective political community and the politics of life in the work of Michel Henry. Her research and teaching interests include: postcolonial and decolonial theory; critical higher education studies; race and racialization; intersectional feminist/queer theory; and critical approaches to humans, animals, and cyborgs. She is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Redlands, in California. She also teaches classes in the departments of Public Policy and Race and Ethnic Studies.

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Thea is originally from North Carolina, where she received an A.B. in Political Science from Duke University. She holds a M.A. in Asian Studies from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.