Below is the information of scholars who have completed their PhD in Political Theory at Northwestern.
2024
- Lucien Ferguson
Drinan Visiting Assistant Professor, Boston College Law School
Dissertation: “The Spirit of Caste: Recasting the History of Civil Rights”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); Alvin B. Tillery, Jr., Erin F. Delaney (Law), Paul A. Gowder (Law)
2023
- Owen Brown
Visiting Assistant Professor,Scripps College, Department of Politics
Dissertation: “Ordering Through Race/Racialising Through Order: Race and the Production of International Order.”
Committee: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (Chair), Ian Hurd, Barnor Hesse (African American Studies), José Medina (Philosophy) - Nathalia Justo
Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Legal Studies, Bowdoin College
Dissertation: “The Global Politics of Citizenship: Producing and Protecting the ‘Deserving” Subject'”
Committee: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Ian Hurd, Naeem Inayatullah (Ithaca College)
2022
- Rhiannon Auriemma
Lecturer, University of Chicago
Dissertation: “(Being a) Feminist (is a) Struggle: Feminist Theory and Politics in the Era of The Women’s March”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); Alvin B. Tillery, Jr., Jennifer C. Nash (Duke) - Shaul Notkin
Dissertation: “Political Theory for the Age of Social Movement”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); James Farr; Shmuel Nili - Malia Bowers
Lecturer, DePaul University
Dissertation: The Space Between: Rethinking Paradox in Contemporary Feminism”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); James Farr, Jennifer C. Nash (Duke) - Gina Giliberti
Dissertation: “Impassioned Religion in Global Politics”
Committee: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Brannon Ingram (Religious Studies)
2021
- Tristan Bradshaw
Lecturer, School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong
Dissertation: “The Use of Humans: Aristotle, Marx, and the Specters of Indeterminate Utility”
Committee: Lars Tønder (Chair); Sara Monoson, Richard Kraut (Philosophy), Samuel Weber (German), Miguel Vatter (Flinders University) - Julia Brown
Harper-Schmidt Fellow, University of Chicago
Dissertation: “At Liberty to Obey: Sincerity and the Scriptural Politics of John Locke”
Committee: James Farr (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
- Arturo Chang
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto
Dissertation: “Imagining America: International Commiseration and National Revolution in the Modern Post-Colony”
Committee: James Farr (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Loubna El Amine, Paul Ramírez (History) - Andrew Day
Dissertation: “Hobbes Unbound”
Committee: James Farr (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Loubna El Amine
2020
- Salih Emre Gercek
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Connecticut
Dissertation: “Democratic Responses to the ‘Social Question’ in the Age of Revolution”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); James Farr, Loubna El Amine, Cristina Lafont (Philosophy)
2019
- Alan J. Kellner
Dissertation: “Nature and Civilization in Immanuel Kant’s Global Politics”
Committee: James Farr (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Hendrik Spruyt, Mark Alznauer (Philosophy) - Christina LoTempio
Dissertation: “Arendt, Adorno, and Angela Davis: A Critique of Capitalist Culture”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); James Farr, Loubna El Amine - Boris Litvin
Visiting Instructor, Eckerd College
Dissertation: “Spectators, Crowds, Citizens, Men in General, and You, Madame: Political Theory and the Politics of Audience”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); James Farr, Dilip P. Gaonkar (Rhetoric & Public Culture), David Lay Williams (DePaul University)
2018
- Javier Burdman
Research Fellow (Tenured), Universidad Nacional de San Martín
Dissertation: “Politics after Totalitarianism: Rethinking Evil, Action, and Judgment in Kant, Arendt, and Lyotard”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); Lars Tønder, Peter Fenves (German), Samuel Weber (German), Christoph Mencke (Goethe-Universität-Frankfurt)
Published as: Javier Burdman, The Shadow of Totalitarianism: Action, Judgment, and Evil in Politics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2022) - Lucy Cane
Dissertation: “Sheldon Wolin and Democracy: Seeing through Loss”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); James Farr, Joan Tronto (Minnesota), George Shulman (NYU)
Published as: Lucy Cane, Sheldon Wolin and Democracy: Seeing Through Loss (New York: Routledge, 2020) - Gent Carrabregu
Assistant Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology-Kosovo (RITK)
Dissertation: “Kant’s Libertarianism and Its Aftermath: Rereading The Conflict of the Faculties, Rethinking Hegel, Arendt, and Habermas”
Committee: James Farr (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Cristina Lafont (Philosophy), Mark Alznauer (Philosophy) - Giuseppe Cumella
Lecturer in Political Science, DePaul University
Dissertation: “Aristotle on Political Activity”
Committee: Sara Monoson (Co-chair), Richard Kraut (Co-chair, Philosophy); Mary G. Dietz, J.P.F. Wynne (Utah) - Lexi Neame
Visiting Assistant Professor, Reed College
Dissertation: “Truth in the Milieu of Politics: Knowledge, Authority, and Democratic Freedom”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); James Farr, Ken Alder (Science in Human Culture)
2017
- Charles Clarke
Dissertation: “Deportation Law and Political Theory”
Committee: Jacqueline Stevens (Chair); Reuel Rogers, Andrew Koppelman (Law) - Michael Christopher Sardo
Dissertation: “From Personal to Political Responsibility: Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Anticipatory Responsibility”
Committee: Lars Tønder (Chair); Jacqueline Stevens, Michael Loriaux, Mark Alznauer (Philosophy)
2016
- Désirée Weber
Associate Professor of Political Science, College of Wooster
Dissertation: “Reading Wittgenstein in Politics: Normativity, Judgment, and Political Pedagogy”
Committee: James Farr (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, John G. Gunnell (UC-Davis)
2015
- Nick Dorzweiler
Professor of the Practice of Political Science and Women’s & Gender Studies, Wheaton College
Dissertation: “‘The Sights That Hold the Crowd’: Political Science and the Politics of Popular Culture”
Committee: James Farr (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Colin Koopman (UOregon) - Jennifer Forestal
Helen Houlahan Rigali Assistant Professor of Political Science, Loyola University Chicago
Dissertation: “Bringing the Site Back In: Social Media and the Politics of Space”
Committee: James Farr (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Benjamin I. Page
Published as: Jennifer Forestal, Designing for Democracy: How to Build Community in Digital Spaces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021) - Arda Güçler
Assistant Professor of International Relations, Özyeğin University
Dissertation: “Untimely Representation: Deliberation, Urgency, and Democratic Theory”
Committee: Lars Tønder (Chair); Bonnie Honig, Jacqueline Stevens - André Munro
Dissertation: “Democratic Excess and Popular Sovereignty”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); James Farr, Sarah Maza (History) - Anna Terwiel
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Trinity College
Dissertation: “Foucault and the Lateral Body Politics of Prison Hunger Strikes”
Committee: Bonnie Honig (Chair); Lars Tønder, Penelope Deutscher (Philosophy)
2013
- John Ackerman
Assistant Professor in Politics and International Relations, Northeastern University London
Dissertation: “The Politics of Political Theology: Rosenzweig, Schmitt, Arendt”
Committee: Bonnie Honig (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Peter Fenves (German), Marc Crépon (École normale supérieure) - Crina Archer
Dissertation: “Time For Democracy: Continuity and Rupture in the Political Thought of Kant, Tocqueville, and Arendt”
Committee: Linda M.G. Zerilli (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, James Farr - Ross Carroll
Assistant Professor in Political Science, Dublin City University
Dissertation: “The Politics of Enthusiasm in Shaftesbury, Hume, and Burke”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); James Farr, Sara Monoson
Published as: Ross Carroll, Uncivil Mirth: Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021) - Menaka Philips
Assistant Professor of Political Science, the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM)
Dissertation: “Contesting the Liberal Paradigm: The Case of John Stuart Mill”
Committee: Mary G. Dietz (Chair); James Farr, Lars Tønder, Elizabeth Beaumont (Minnesota)
2012
- Angela Maione
Dissertation: “Revolutionary Rhetoric: The Political Thought of Mary Wollstonecraft”
Committee: Linda M.G. Zerilli (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Ann Orloff (Sociology) - Douglas Thompson
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of South Carolina
Dissertation: “Beyond the Inner Citadel: Skepticism, Realism, and Toleration in Montaigne’s ‘Essais'”
Committee: Bonnie Honig (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, James Farr
Published as: Douglas I. Thompson, Montaigne and the Tolerance of Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)
2011
- Diego Rossello
Associate Professor of Political Science, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
Dissertation: “The Melancholic Sovereign: The Politics of Human-Animal (In)distinction in Modern Sovereignty”
Committee: Bonnie Honig (Chair); James Farr, Lars Tønder, Samuel Weber (German)
2010
- Laura Ephraim
Professor of Political Science, Williams College
Dissertation: “Recovering the common root of science and politics: Reading Descartes and Hobbes with Vico”
Committee: Linda M.G. Zerilli (Chair); James Farr, Bonnie Honig
Published as: Laura Ephraim, Who Speaks for Nature?: On the Politics of Science (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) - Demetra Kasimis
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
Dissertation: “Drawing the boundaries of democracy: Immigrants and citizens in ancient Greek political thought”
Committee: Sara Monoson (Chair); Mary G. Dietz, Bonnie Honig
Published as: Demetra Kasimis, The Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) - Laura Reagan
Dissertation: “Mimesis in Thomas Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’ (1651): The theater of the modern commonwealth”
Committee: Sara Monoson (Chair); Lars Tønder, Peter Fenves (German)
2009
- Christopher Skeaff
Practicing Psychotherapist
Dissertation: “The politics of expression in Spinoza”
Committee: Sara Monoson (Chair); Bonnie Honig, Lars Tønder
Published as: Christopher Skeaff, Becoming Political: Spinoza’s Vital Republicanism and the Democratic Power of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018)
2008
- Jake Matatyaou
Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Design, UCLA
Dissertation: “Memory – Space – Politics: Public Memorial and the Problem of Political Judgment”
Committee: Linda M.G. Zerilli (Chair); Bonnie Honig, Samuel Weber (German), Mark Jarzombek (MIT)
2006
- Lida Maxwell
Professor of Political Science, Boston University
Dissertation: “Between law and lawlessness: Democratizing law in Montesquieu, Burke, and Arendt”
Committee: Bonnie Honig (Chair); Sara Monoson, Linda M.G. Zerilli
Published as: Lida Maxwell, Public Trials: Burke, Zola, Arendt, and the Politics of Lost Causes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) - Ella Myers
Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies, University of Utah
Dissertation: “The turn to ethics and its democratic costs”
Committee: Linda M.G. Zerilli (Chair); Bonnie Honig, Sara Monoson
Published as: Ella Myers, Worldly Ethics: Democratic Politics and Care for the World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013) - Torrey Shanks
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto
Dissertation: “Political imagination in the thought of John Locke”
Committee: Linda M.G. Zerilli (Chair); Bonnie Honig, Kirstie McClure (UCLA)
Published as: Torrey Shanks, Authority Figures: Rhetoric and Experience in John Locke’s Political Thought (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015)