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Political Theory
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UCLA's program in political theory represents a broad range of perspectives on how to pursue political thinking in an era of rapid institutional change like our own. We have great strengths in feminist, critical, and democratic theory, and in American as well as European political thought. Across all of these topical inflections, we emphasize a substantive concern for how issues of globalization, modernization, and multiculturalism variously enable and constrain possibilities for political agency, rights, and citizenship in the present. One of the great advantages of our graduate program is the varied opportunities it offers for interdisciplinary study. These interests are strongly encouraged by the faculty and greatly facilitated by an extensive and impressive array of campus and regional resources. The interdisciplinary richness of UCLA and Los Angeles is reflected in a constructive permeability of disciplinary boundaries that is institutionalized in a number of inter- and intra-campus programs and that is sustained by networks of interdisciplinary personal relationships. Graduate students interested in historically inflected political theory have access to the Humanities Consortium, which includes Centers for Modern and Contemporary Studies, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Studies. UCLA's Clark Library and the nearby Huntington Library offer major archival resources for historical study. These, as well as the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History and our own Workshop in Political Theory, provide a series of lectures, workshops, and symposia throughout the year which focus on promoting interdisciplinary linkages between the theoretical dimensions of the social sciences, humanities, cultural and critical studies broadly conceived. There are also a number of organized research units, including Centers for Women's Studies, African American, Chicano, Native American, and Asian American Studies, all of which promote collaborative research, publish a range of monographs and journals, and maintain specialized research collections. This remarkable, pluralistic range of intellectual resources both mirrors and is enhanced by the virtues and vibrancy of an extraordinary city. One of the most diverse, cosmopolitan cities in the world, Los Angeles is the center of a pulsating multiculturalism that permeates every aspect of life and makes available an incomparable range of activities extending from the mundane to the curious to the exceptional. A number of world class museums, centers for the arts and cultural activities, as well as several other major universities, are scattered throughout the region. And the richness of the night life and entertainment is reflected in a phenomenal variety of restaurants, eateries, performance and exhibition spaces, clubs and music located in every area and neighborhood of the city. To study political theory here is to engage the politics, the cultures and the histories that might yet be in the century that has just begun. The Students We have been blessed with a talented cohort of graduate students in political theory in the past several years. We list here some recent dissertations and publications. Dissertations: Kathleen Arnold, "Homelessness, Citizenship and Identity" (1998), published as Homelessness, citizenship, and identity: the uncanniness of late modernity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004). Jason Caro, "More Freedom" 2000 Ronald Den Otter, "Standing Rawls on his Feet: Applied Public Reason, Judgment, and the Practice of Democratic Citizenship" 2002 Timothy Gaffaney, "Freedom, Democratic Citizenship, and the Problem of Poverty" (1997), published as Freedom for the poor: welfare and the foundations of democratic citizenship (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000). Richard Golden, "Identity/Politics: Strategy and Structure" 2005 Michael Goodhart, "Democracy without Limits: Human Rights and the Democratization of the Global Order" 1999, published as Democracy as human rights: freedom and equality in the age of globalization (New York: Routledge, 2005). Susan Gomez, "Contemporary Chicana Feminist Discourse: Negotiating the Boundaries, Borders, and Brujos Among and Between Critical Counter Discourses" 2002 Shefali Jha, "Hegel and the Sociality of Freedom" 1999 Shahriar Kalhor, "Beyond Christianity: Hegel, Religion, and the State" 2004 Yong-Chan Kim, "The Criticism of Metaphysics in Hegel and Nietzsche" 1997 Andrew Lister, "Understanding the Burdens of Judgment: Moral Pluralism, Causal Ambiguity, and the Limits of Consequentialist Public Reason" 2000. John Medearis, "Democracy in Joseph Schumpeter's Political and Social Thought" 1997, published as Joseph Schumpeter’s two theories of democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). William Niemi, "Popular Politics and Democratic Theory: Democratization in Victorian Britain" (1996) Daniel O'Connor, "Democracy as a Way of Life: Deweyan Pragmatism and the Challenge of Capitalism for in Thought and Practice" 1998 Daniel O'Neill, "A Revolution in Morals and Manners: The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate" 1999, forthcoming as The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate: Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, forthcoming) Shira Tarrant, "Confronting the Bonds of Ideology: Feminist Social and Political Theory, 1945-1965" 2000, published as When sex became gender (New York: Routledge, 2006). Pik Wan Wong, "Negotiating Gender: The Women's Movement for Legal Reform in Colonial Hong Kong" 1999 |
