David Myer Temin

David Temin is a political theorist whose research and teaching spans American political thought, Native American studies and politics, comparative and global political thought, and postcolonial and critical race studies. His research explores how the diverse strands of anticolonial thought help to reconsider central dilemmas of social and environmental justice in empire’s wake, as well as refashioning political concepts such as sovereignty and land. Temin's first book, Remapping Sovereignty: Decolonization and Self-Determination in North American Indigenous Political Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2023), bridges political-intellectual history and conceptual analysis to show how key 20th-century Indigenous intellectuals and activists in lands today claimed by Canada and the United States reshaped the philosophical substance and normative goals of “decolonization.” The book traces how these conceptual moves and practical efforts to enact decolonization hinged on heavily debated projects of disentangling self-determination from the sovereign-state, the restitution of dispossessed land, autonomy and safety for Indigenous women, and care-based duties of ecological stewardship. Remapping Sovereignty won the "Best First Book Award" (2024) from APSA's Foundations of Political Theory section. Temin has also published research in venues such as the Oxford Handbook of the History of the Global South, Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, American Political Science Review, Political Research Quarterly, Constellations, and European Journal of Political Theory. He is currently working on a second book, entitled "Wages for Earthwork," in which he argues for the centrality of ecological labor to anticolonial climate justice politics.

You can view his personal website here for a more complete list of publications, teaching, and other professional activities.