Overview
Martina Villalobos is a second-year graduate student in the Department of German Studies at Cornell University. She earned her B.A. at the University of Michigan, where she studied French and German. She was awarded the Martin Haller Prize for her thesis, “Theater of Crisis: Art, Politics, and the Production of Community in the Nazi Thingspiel (1933-1936)” where she set out to understand the role of the Thingspiel movement in more broadly defining the Volksgemeinshaft during the first part of the Nazi era. During the 2021-2022 academic year, Martina studied under Dr. Rainer Forst at the Normative Orders Centre at the Goethe University with the support of a Fulbright Research Grant. During her time in Frankfurt, she began conceptualizing a theoretical project that brought together the work of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory with contemporary Black Radical Thought. In particular, she is interested in the ways in which thinking Blackness presents a potential for reorienting present-day critical theory and political philosophy. Her current research interests include the politicized practice of the avant-garde, the relationship between poetic language, law, and justice, and contemporary discussions of democratic theory.