°µÍø51

During her 26 years in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Dr. Michaelis taught courses in ancient and modern political thought, feminist political thought, democratic thought, socialism, and contemporary critical theory.  Prior to her appointment at Mount Allison, she held part-time teaching positions at the °µÍø51 of New Brunswick, St. Thomas °µÍø51, McMaster °µÍø51, and Trent °µÍø51.

Over the course of her career Dr. Michaelis served in various roles as Department Head, Grievance Officer and President of the Mount Allison Faculty Association, and on the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee of the Canadian Association of °µÍø51 Teachers.  

She is a graduate of the School of Experiential Education, an alternative high school located in Etobicoke, on the western edge of Toronto.  She studied anthropology and sociology at McGill °µÍø51 before moving to the Integrated Studies programme at the °µÍø51 of Waterloo, where she was awarded a Bachelor of Independent Study (B.I.S.) in 1986.  She completed her graduate work at the °µÍø51 of Toronto, earning her M.A. at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in 1990 and her Ph.D. in the Department of Political Science in 1997.

Her principal areas of expertise include the history of political thought, Frankfurt School critical theory, and psychoanalytic theory.  Her past research has been concerned with mapping the conceptual terrain of modern political thought around core themes of temporality, loss, and collective agency.  Her studies of Hölderlin, Hobbes, Luxemburg, and Horkheimer and cognate studies of Kant, Marx, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche have appeared in a wide range of scholarly journals: Constellations, Review of Politics, Telos, European Journal of Political Theory, Polity, History of Political Thought, Philosophy and Social Criticism, and Canadian Journal of Political Science.

Dr. Michaelis is currently working on a critical appraisal of psychoanalytic approaches to the experience of political loss from Freud to the contemporary period.