David Leonard Clark
Professor, English & Cultural Studies

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Dr. David L. Clark’s research interests include British Romantic culture and literature; Continental philosophy, especially Immanuel Kant; contemporary Critical Theory; and Critical Animal Studies.

He warmly welcomes graduate supervisees who are interested in pursuing projects in 18th- and 19th-century studies; contemporary Critical Theory; Critical Animal Studies; and studies associated with the climate catastrophe (Anthropocene Studies). He also serves on graduate supervisory committees ranging from contemporary fiction to Critical Pedagogy to Indigenous Studies.

Dr. Clark is also Associate Member of the Department of Health, Aging and Society at McMaster and a member of the Council of Instructors in the Arts & Science program, where he teaches social and political philosophy. He is a recipient of the President’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision and the McMaster Students Union Teaching Award for Humanities. He was George Whalley Visiting Professor in Romanticism at Queen’s University in 2012 and Lansdowne Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria in 2013. He has also twice been Visiting Professor at the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University. With Dr. Henry Giroux, he was for many years co-editor of the Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies.

Dr. Clark began his career as a scholar of the poetry and engravings of the radical British visionary, William Blake, but subsequently turned towards contemporary critical theory, on the one hand, and late eighteenth-century philosophy (especially Immanuel Kant ), on the other. Dr. Clark has published research on a wide range of subjects, from the role of the public university in promoting peace to the surgical separation of conjoined twins to queer theory, and from photographing atrocities to the question of addiction in philosophy to what it means to fall under the gaze of the non-human animal. He has contributed to the online public affairs journal, Truthout, including two interviews conducted by the Public Intellectuals Project: “What does it mean to welcome Omar Khadr? University students and the lesson of hospitality” and “The Canadian university and the war against Omar Khadr.” He is also founder of The Hospitality Project: Five Hundred Letters of Welcome to Omar Khadr. He occasionally writes Op-Eds, including: "The fact that teachers committed these crimes makes matters worse" , “Vagrant’: A label from early life that never left me” , “A near death experience on the path of my life” . He has been a guest-speaker on several podcasts, including: “Marion Woodman and the Transformative Power of Uncertainty with David Clark” and David Clark on Building the Sanctuary University.