Dr. Ani Chen is the Mitchell Center/SNF Paideia Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her PhD in Government from Cornell University in 2023, focusing on political theory. Her work lies at the intersection of the history of political thought, feminist political theory, and democratic theory.
Her current book project Voices of Authority: Claiming Freedom on the French Feminist Stage addresses the question of how women can get heard in public life by bringing theatrical performances written by 20th century French feminist thinkers (Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous, and Monique Wittig) into conversation with contemporary expressions of feminist protest. She is also working on a parallel research project that offers a new approach to thinking about free expression through the lens of elite politics by way of Michel Foucault’s late lectures and the tragic plays of Euripides. Her academic writing has appeared in Contemporary Political Theory, Political Theory, Diacritics, and William James Studies.