Susan Buck Morss

Distinguished Professor of Political Philosophy, Graduate Center, core faculty member of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change

Susan Buck-Morss is an interdisciplinary thinker and a prolific writer of international reputation.  Her most recent book: Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (2009), offers a fundamental reinterpretation of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic by linking it to the influence of the Haitian Revolution.  Her books The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (1977) and The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (1989) have been translated into several languages and have been called “modern classics in the field.”

Her training is in Continental Theory, specifically, German Critical Philosophy and the Frankfurt School. Her work crosses disciplines, including Art History, Architecture, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, German Studies, Philosophy, History, and Visual Culture. She is currently writing on the philosophy of history: History as the Cosmology of Modernity.