Diane S. Rubenstein

About

Professor Diane S. Rubenstein is a faculty member in the Department of Government at Cornell University and holds the title of Professor Emerita. Her research and teaching focus on the critical interaction between continental theory—primarily French, German, and Italian—and contemporary manifestations of ideology in Franco-American political culture. Her expertise encompasses political rhetoric, media disclosure of covert operations, and the influence of ideology in political contexts, with her work having been published in anthologies. Her research interests include contemporary Continental Theory, such as poststructuralism, practice theory, deconstruction, semiotics, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, French feminism, media theory, and theories of sexuality and gender, as well as western Marxism. She also specializes in political language, exploring political rhetoric, literary theory, literature and politics, and institutional rhetorics. Additionally, her work covers American Studies topics, including American political and popular culture, presidential politics, race, (trans)gender, and American identity. Her comparative politics research focuses on Western Europe, particularly France, Germany, and Italy, examining fascisms, the role of intellectuals in politics, and French and German political thought from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Research topics

• Biology
• Ecology

Selected publications

• An Introduction to Animal Behavior

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2021-02-22 · 63 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Natural Selection and the Evolution of Behavior The Cost–Benefit Approach The Levels of Analysis The Integrative Study of Animal Behavior Approaches to Studying Behavior Examining the Adaptive Basis of Behavior Inferring the Evolutionary History of Behavior Identify the central role of natural...

  PublisherDOI

• Survival Benefits of Group Living in a Fluctuating Environment

  The American Naturalist · 2020-02-05 · 61 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Group living is predicted to arise only when the fitness benefits outweigh the costs of sociality. Group-living species—including cooperatively breeding and family-living birds and mammals—occur most frequently in environments where climatic conditions fluctuate unpredictably from year to year. The fitness consequences of group living are thus expected to vary with changing environmental conditions, though few studies have examined this possibility. We examined whether living in large social gro…

  PublisherDOI

• Extreme and Variable Climatic Conditions Drive the Evolution of Sociality in Australian Rodents

  Current Biology · 2020-01-30 · 53 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Ecological uncertainty favours the diversification of host use in avian brood parasites

  Nature Communications · 2020 · 40 citations

  Adaptive responses to ecological uncertainty may affect the dynamics of interspecific interactions and shape the course of evolution within symbioses. Obligate avian brood parasites provide a particularly tractable system for understanding how uncertainty, driven by environmental variability and symbiont phenology, influences the evolution of species interactions. Here, we use phylogenetically-informed analyses and a comprehensive dataset on the behaviour and geographic distribution of obligate…

  DOI

• A cryptic role for reciprocal helping in a cooperatively breeding bird

  Nature · 2025-05-07 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Identifying the mechanisms that underlie cooperation is fundamental to biology 1 . The most complex form of cooperation in vertebrates occurs in cooperative breeders, in which helpers forego reproduction and assist in raising the young of others, typically relatives 2 . Not all cooperative societies, however, are kin-based—nearly half of all avian 3 and mammalian 4 cooperative breeders form mixed-kin societies, much like those of humans 5 . Kin selection in mixed-kin societies occurs wh…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Kin structure, conflict and caste formation: the evolution of sociality in Synalpheus

  NSF · $599k · 2011–2015

• Environmental, Endocrine and Epigenetic Drivers of Sociality in Birds

  NSF · $675k · 2013–2018

• DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Environmental Quality and the Costs of Reproduction: an Experimental Test in a Cooperatively Breeding Bird

  NSF · $21k · 2015–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Sheng‐Feng Shen

  Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica

  73 shared

• Mark Liu

  Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica

  29 shared

• Irby J. Lovette

  Cornell University

  28 shared

• Sarah Guindre‐Parker

  Kennesaw State University

  21 shared

• Shih‐Fan Chan

  Academia Sinica

  20 shared

• Shipher Wu

  17 shared

• J. Emmett Duffy

  Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

  16 shared

• Y. Wen

  16 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Cornell University

  2006

• A.B.

  Dartmouth College

  1999

Similar researchers at Columbia University

• Norman Uphoffh-53
• Kenneth Robertsh-36
• Thomas Pepinskyh-36