Michael A. Portal

I am pursuing a Ph.D. in Philosophy. I am working under the direction of Drs. Claire Katz and Daniel Conway.

I complete my M.A. in History at Texas A&M University (2023). My thesis, Prehistoric France: Gergvoie, Lascaux, and 'Eternal France' (1940-1945), was under the direction of Dr. Cynthia Bouton.

I completed my M.A. in French Studies at the American College of the Mediterranean (2018). My thesis, Des Grottes aux camps : une non-histoire du rire juif, was under the direction of Dr. Michel Lantelme.

I completed my B.A. in Philosophy and Policy Studies at Rice University (2017). My Senior thesis, Martin Heidegger’s Critique of Technology and Modern Education, was under the direction of Dr. Steven Crowell.

You can find my CV here.

I am interested in: 

• Post-Kantian European Philosophy (esp. hermeneutics, phenomenology, and existentialism)

• Social and Political Philosophy (esp. empire studies and French thought post-May 1968)

• Jewish Philosophy (esp. Holocaust and memory studies)

• Aesthetics

My dissertation (in process) concerns the relationship between ethics and suffering in the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot.