Skip to content

Maxwell Lectures in Political Theory

The Neal A. Maxwell Lecture in Political Theory and Contemporary Politics

 2023: “I, Too, Sing America: Black Patriotism from Frederick Douglass to Whitney     Houston," 

Simon Stow, William & Mary

video of the lecture is available here.

Commentators

Michaele Ferguson, University of Colorado
Demetra Kasimis, University of Chicago

 2022: “More Beautiful than Democracy: Toni Morrison and the Possibility of a Shareable World,” 

Lawrie Balfour, University of Virginia

video of the lecture is available here. The lecture and responses are forthcoming as a symposium in Theory & Event.

Commentators

Jasmine K. Syedullah, Vassar College
Paul C. Taylor, Vanderbilt University

 2019: "Beholden: From Freedom to Debt"

Kennan Ferguson, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 

A video of the lecture is available here
Read the essay and two responses as a symposium in Theory & Event.

Commentators

Kouslaa Kessler-Mata, University of San Francisco
M. Shadee Malaklou, Berea College

 2018: "'White and Deadly': The Sweet Taste of Freedom in a Global Era” 

Elisabeth Anker, The George Washington University
Read the essay and the two responses as a symposium in Theory & Event.
                              See also the book of which the essay is a part.

Commentators

Andrew Dilts, Loyola Marymount University
Lida Maxwell, Boston University

 2017: “Body and Soul: The Persistence of the Human"

Thomas L. Dumm, Amherst College
Read the essay and the two responses as a symposium in Theory & Event.

Commentators

William E. Connolly, Johns Hopkins University
Matthew Scherer, George Mason University

 2016: “Anarchist Women and the Politics of Walking” 

Kathy Ferguson, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Read the essay and the two responses as a symposium in Political Research Quarterly.

Commentators

Lori Marso, Union College
Annie Menzel, Vassar College

 2015: "Walt Whitman and the Soft Voice of Sympathy" 

Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins University

Read the essay and the two responses as a mini-symposium in Political Research Quarterly.
See also the book of which the essay is a part.

Commentators

Romand Coles, Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic University, “Antagonism and the Ecology of Sympathies”
Cristin Ellis, University of Mississippi, “Numb Networks: The Politics of Impersonal Sympathies”

 2014: "The Fight for Public Things"

Bonnie Honig, Brown University
Read the essay and the two responses as a mini-symposium in Political Research Quarterly.
See also the book of which the essay is a part.

Commentators

Jason Frank, Cornell University,  "Collective Actors, Common Desires"
James Martel, San Francisco State University, "Against thinning (and teleology): politics and objects in the face of catastrophe in Lear and von Trier"

 2013: "Species Evolution and Cultural Freedom"

William E. Connolly, Johns Hopkins University
Read the essay and the two responses as a mini-symposium in Political Research Quarterly.
See also the book of which the essay is a part.

Commentators

Elisabeth Anker, The George Washington University, “Freedom and the Human in ‘Evolutionary’ Political Theory”
Kennan Ferguson, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, “The Deep Biology of Politics: A Reminder”

Future Lectures

Michaele Ferguson, University of Colorado; Char Miller, George Mason University; Cristina Beltrán, New York University


 

Last Updated: 11/15/23