Theoretical Foundations

Note on Intellectual Engagement
The thinkers, theorists, and writers listed here have shaped my symbolic, intellectual, and methodological sensibilities — not necessarily through agreement, but through resonance, provocation, or meaningful divergence. They appear as mirrors, guides, and interlocutors across different stages of my work.

Inclusion does not imply alignment on all fronts. Where figures adopt frameworks that erase Jewish self-determination — particularly via anti-Zionist narratives, BDS advocacy, or reductive colonial paradigms — I diverge clearly and unequivocally.

Cultural & Media Theory

Cultural Studies · Media Studies · Representation · Audience Research · Participatory Culture · Cultural Production · Cultural Mediation · Media and Communication Studies · Creative Industries · Cultural Globalization · Symbolic Economy · Symbolic Labor · Affective Economies · Political Economy · Affective Publics · Semiotics of Identity · Cultural Memory · Aesthetic Politics · Narrative Power · Media Affect · Cultural Capital · Critical Media Theory · Cultural Politics · Hegemony · Poststructuralism · Symbolic Interactionism · Sociology of Knowledge

Stuart Hall · Richard Dyer · Angela McRobbie · Dick Hebdige · Douglas Kellner · John Hartley · Brian McNair · Tony Bennett · John Fiske · Marita Sturken & Lisa Cartwright · Lev Manovich · Thomas Poell · Ien Ang · Nick Couldry · Tiziana Terranova · Sara Ahmed (noted: divergence re: Israel)· Mieke Bal · Geert Lovink · Joke Hermes · Cees Hamelink · Roland Barthes · Lynne Joyrich · Macarena Gómez-Barris · Avital Ronell · Diana Taylor · Trinh T. Minh-ha · Zizi Papacharissi · Lawrence Grossberg · Pierre Bourdieu · Jean Baudrillard · Anthony Giddens · Zygmunt Bauman

Psychoanalysis, Identity & Symbolic Life

Psychoanalysis · Lacanian Theory · Masculinities · Subjectivities · Self-Image and Projection · Identity and Branding · Psychodynamic Branding · Critical Social Psychology · Symbolic Interactionism · Embodiment · Queer Theory · Gender Identity · Unconscious · Repression · Substitution · Symbolic Formation · Attachment Theory · Narrative Identity · Developmental Trauma Theory · Care Time · Psychosocial Temporality · Symbolic Refusal · The Maternal Function · Object Relations Theory

Sigmund Freud · Anna Freud · Carl Jung · Melanie Klein · Donald Winnicott · Julia Kristeva · Jessica Benjamin · Nancy Chodorow · Patrick Casement · Thomas Ogden · Adam Phillips · Marion Milner · Milton H. Erickson · Stephen Gilligan · Jean Houston · Alice Miller · Gabor Maté (noted: divergence re: Israel) · Karen Horney · Abraham Maslow · Erich Fromm · John Bowlby · Mary Ainsworth · Erik Erikson · Dan McAdams · Bessel van der Kolk · Stephen Porges · Otto Kernberg · Heinz Kohut · Wilfred Bion · Franz Alexander · Lisa Baraitser · Jacqueline Rose · Stephen Frosh · Lynne Segal · Joan Copjec · Amanda Anderson · Christopher Bollas

Social Psychology & Symbolic Dynamics

Social Meaning-Making · Identity Formation · Self and Other · Symbolic Interactionism · Social Cognition · Group Belonging · Role Theory · Narrative Self-Construction · Attribution Patterns · Emotion Regulation · Social Scripts · Internalized Oppression · Affective Dynamics · Boundary Regulation · Stigma and Status · Intersubjectivity · Psycho-Social Trauma · Social Identity Theory · Social Perception · Self-Schema · Impression Management · Stereotype Threat · Moral Emotion · Cultural Social Psychology

Erving Goffman · Henri Tajfel · John Turner · Hazel Markus · Claude Steele · George Herbert Mead · Jonathan Haidt · Susan Fiske · Shelley Taylor · Philip Cushman · Elliot Aronson · Solomon Asch · Stanley Milgram · Muzafer Sherif · Carol Dweck · Kurt Lewin · Albert Bandura · Harold Kelley · Fritz Heider · Leon Festinger

Illness, Health & Embodiment

Narrative Medicine · Illness Narratives · Invisible Illness · ME/CFS · Long COVID · Post-Infectious Syndrome · Dysautonomia · Contested Illness · Diagnostic Ambiguity · Chronic Illness and Cultural Visibility · Disability Studies · Health Communication · Health Social Movements · Sociology of Health and Illness · Symbolic Misrecognition · Narrative Silencing · Psychosocial Harm · Illness as Metaphor · Semantic Injustice · Embodied Precarity · Somatic Narrative · Embodied Cognition · Psychosocial Disability · Temporal Disruption · Aesthetic Illness Politics

Arthur Frank · Susan Sontag · Rosemarie Garland-Thomson · Rita Charon · Byron Good · Cheryl Mattingly · Lennard J. Davis · Julie Livingston · Tobin Siebers · Alison Kafer · Thomas Hübl · Julie Rehmeyer · Brian Hughes · Sasha Nimmo · David Tuller · Ryan Prior · Meghan O’Rourke · Leonard Jason · Jennifer Brea · Whitney Dafoe · Annemarie Mol · Lisa Blackman · Angela Woods · Esther Jones · Petra Kuppers · Kelly Fritsch · Nirmala Erevelles

Urbanism, Culture & Symbolic Economies

Urban Studies · Urban Sociology · Urban Cultural Production · Creative Cities · Creative and Cultural Industries · Cultural Economy · Place Identity · Urban Semiotics · Urban Symbolic Mediation · Cultural Geography · Cultural Planning · Agritourism & Cultural Development · Sharing Economy · New Urbanism · Everyday Practice · Narrative Place-Making · Symbolic Economies · Emotional Landscapes · Geographies of Care · Spatial Belonging · Affective Infrastructure · Narrative Spatiality · Atmospheric Politics

Richard Florida · Sharon Zukin · Manuel Castells · Justin O’Connor · Don Slater · Henri Lefebvre · Doreen Massey · Ash Amin & Nigel Thrift · Michel de Certeau · Aihwa Ong · Richard Sennett · Martijn de Waal · Shannon Mattern · Avery Gordon · Jennifer Gabrys · Neil Brenner

Narrative & Symbolic Systems

Narrative Theory · Narrative Identity · Cultural Prediction · Symbolic Systems · Storytelling & Identity · Meaning-Making Practices · Mythopoetics · Semiotic Structures · Cultural Temporality · Narrative Mediation

Paul Ricoeur · Jerome Bruner · Laurel Richardson · Monika Fludernik · Dan McAdams · Jonathan Lear · Roland Barthes · Claude Lévi-Strauss · James Hillman

Platform Studies & Digital Mediation

Platform Capitalism · Algorithmic Agency · Interface Culture · Digital Labor · Audience Agency · Participatory Algorithms · Cultural Infrastructures

Tiziana Terranova · Tarleton Gillespie · Safiya Noble · Nick Srnicek · José van Dijck · Zizi Papacharissi

Memory, Commemoration & Cultural Trauma

Cultural Memory · Holocaust Representation · Memorialization · Trauma Discourse · Aesthetic Commemoration · Affective History · Narrative Afterlife

Marianne Hirsch · Andreas Huyssen · Jan Assmann · Dominick LaCapra · Saidiya Hartman (noted: divergence re: Israel) · James E. Young · Eva Hoffman

Methodology & Interpretation

Discourse Analysis · Critical Discourse Analysis · Thematic Analysis · Narrative Inquiry · Autoethnography · Reflexive Practice · Ethnographic Observation · Stakeholder Interviews · Literature Reviews · Narrative Translation · Symbolic Reframing · Dream Analysis · Nondual Inquiry · Interpretivism · Dialogic Methodologies · Symbolic Systems Mapping · Phenomenology · Poetic Inquiry · Heuristic Inquiry · Psychoanalytic Ethnography · Narrative Refusal · Analytic Third · Social Constructionism

Marianne Hirsch · Carolyn Steedman · Veena Das · Paul Ricoeur · Laurel Richardson · Norman Denzin

Sociopolitical Thought & Cultural Critique

Critical Theory · Frankfurt School · Political Economy · Ideology · Neoliberalism · Cultural Resistance · Affective Ideology · Symbolic Violence · Social and Cultural Capital · Cultural Policy · Structural Disavowal · Visibility Regimes · Aesthetic Citizenship · Biopolitics · Narrative Precarity · Psycho-Social Oppression · Slow Death · False Consciousness

Walter Benjamin · Theodor Adorno · Max Horkheimer · David Harvey · Fredric Jameson · Nancy Fraser · Antonio Gramsci · Wendy Brown · Herbert Marcuse · Louis Althusser · Georg Lukács · Slavoj Žižek · Lauren Berlant (noted: divergence re: Israel) · Jacques Rancière · Elizabeth Povinelli · Frantz Fanon · Saidiya Hartman (noted: divergence re: Israel) · Ann Stoler · Ruha Benjamin (noted: divergence re: Israel) · Tracy McMillan Cottom (noted: divergence re: Israel)