Tristan Hughes is a PhD student in the Politics Department, specializing in political theory. His research focuses on histories of racism, race, and empire. His dissertation is a history of American white supremacist ideology from a trans-national and comparative perspective. From dreams of a global Confederate empire to the Tennessee Valley Authority, the project shows how the conceptual frameworks used to describe European counterrevolution—such as the Counter-Enlightenment, fascist ideology, and reactionary modernism—can be extended to understand American white supremacy when adapted to the U.S.'s specific histories of colonialism and empire.

Publications

"A Space for Freedom: The Paleolibertarian Coalition," Journal of Political Ideologies (2023).

"The political theory of techno-colonialism," European Journal of Political Theory (2024).