top of page
Amid violence and division
Ethical Entanglement
Us:
Christina Chi Zhang (she/ her)
is an architectural designer and educator who designs, builds, teaches, and writes in conversation with those who live in the aftermath—refugees, survivors, disabled communities, and others carrying stories the world too often turns away from. Her work lives in post-traumatic cities, war-torn landscapes, and the margins of silence, where architecture becomes less about buildings and more about listening.
Through installations, classroom practices, conversations, field work, and shared meals, she asks: How do we carry histories not our own? How do we care from afar, when global violence threatens to sever our ties? Rooted in a framework she calls ethical entanglement, her practice moves across geographies and disciplines, always in search of ways to resist indifference and stay connected in divided times.
is an assistant professor of political science at Lehigh University, where he teaches courses in political theory, American political thought, and critical pedagogy. His research focuses on democratic theory, radical pedagogy, and the politics of incarceration. He is the author of “The Necro-President: Trump, MAGA, and the Decline of the American Republic” (Springer, 2025), “A Politics of All: Thomas Jefferson and Radical Democracy” (Lexington Books, 2022), and co-author of “The Sublime of the Political: Narrative & Autoethnography as Theory” (transcript Verlag & Columbia University Press, 2021). His articles appear in Philosophy & Social Criticism, New Political Science, Journal of Narrative Politics, and the Journal of Education and Practice, among others.
In addition to writing, Dean works with photography as a mode of critical inquiry, and his series on incarceration and landscape has been featured in several exhibitions across the United States. In this project, he contributes his expertise in political theory and diverse teaching experience across community colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, adult education, and carceral classrooms.
Christina Chi Zhang and Dean Caivano first crossed paths at Lehigh University, where a series of conversations naturally gave rise to the concept of Ethical Entanglement. It builds on Zhang's teaching in post-atrocity contexts and Caivano's work in critical political theory and carceral classrooms. Together, we began to reframe our prior experiences into a shared pedagogical framework—one that is both reflective and transferable, grounded in care, and responsive to the ethical complexities of teaching in divided times.
bottom of page