I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley.

My research examines how Americans have theorized and contested representation, emotional attachment, morality, and their relationships to political institutions. As a result, I write and teach about political theory, American politics, and institutions.

History of US Representation

In A Sympathetic Pair, my dissertation, I examine the history of representation conceived as a kind of resemblance in American political thought. I excavate 18th and 19th century rhetoric articulated by prolific political actors during moments of crisis: constitutional ratification, Reconstruction, and its aftermath. Through this discussion, I explore descriptive representation as a set of practices and concepts often articulated by members of groups that feared or faced exclusion, who were in part concerned with emotional connections embedded in representative relationships. My project builds on scholarship on attachments and descriptive representation in the US, demonstrating their recurring pairing and the deep cutting implications this has for how we understand and design popular government(s). 

Legislative Proximity

A common view held by founding generation Americans was that social and spatial distance weaken sympathy toward others. In “Distance Divides,” I show that this served as a foundation for a powerful Anti-Federalist critique of the 1787 Constitution. One of the problems of the proposed document for New York based Brutus, Federal Farmer, and Melancton Smith was that it threatened to nationalize representation. This would in turn fundamentally undermine attached connections for officeholders, who they held should be a substitute that shared professions, interests, feelings, and views with constituents. Using this reconstruction of Anti-Federalist thought in its context, I point to structural tendencies in American elective representation that tend to exacerbate political alienation. Two articles have resulted from this project, including a paper I am working on that places this theory of representation in dialogue with theories of sortition.

Literature and Morality

We can often gain conceptual purchase on dynamics in our politics by the way they are dramatized in literature. On the theme of ethics in politics, I have written on the schism between efficacy and morality in Robert Penn Warren’s writings. I argue the crisis at the core of his critique of modernity lends itself to an amoral acceptance of corruption, or embracing a radical reimagining of political ethics. I am open to collaboration on projects related to American literature, representation, emotional attachments, and radicalism.

Originally from Seattle, I obtained my undergraduate education and first MA from the University of Houston. I intend to defend my dissertation at UC Berkeley in the spring of 2026.

You may contact me at: douglasvan@berkeley.edu.