What We Do

Hobbes Quote

Teaching

We offer a wide range of graduate courses in political thought from antiquity to the present. Survey courses typically explore a wide range of texts within a given period or context (ancient & medieval, early modern, modern, contemporary, American). Courses of this type may be taught as standalone seminars or they may take the form of a weekly graduate seminar attached to an undergraduate lecture course on the same subject. We encourage graduate students to sit in on our undergraduate lectures, especially in areas they have not previously studied.

We also like to offer weekly seminars examining a single text or author, such as Hobbes's Elements of Law, Machiavelli’s Discourses, Aristotle’s Politics, Plato's Laws, and Hobbes's Leviathan. Other courses explore particular themes or topics within political theory, often straddling periods and approaches: recent examples include "Liberty," "Sovereignty," "Absolutism," and "Political Representation." We also occasionally offer no-credit reading groups, either during or outside the semesters. Plato’s Statesman and Marx’s Capital were both offered within the past five years.

Many of our courses are offered regularly and we try to balance our enthusiasms with our students’ needs. We also welcome student requests for particular material. 

We hope soon to launch a new reading guide for incoming graduate students. This will include a wide range of recommended readings, from the canonical core to more idiosyncratic personal suggestions, including notable examples of interpretative scholarship and discussions of different approaches to the study of political thought. 

Research Workshop

The core of our research programming and our community is our near-weekly student-driven, student-centered political theory workshop (PS 291T). We ask that all graduate students resident locally be enrolled in the workshop whenever possible.

Students are expected to present regularly throughout their time here, as follows:

 Year 1 – option of presenting a term paper

Year 2 – present draft 2nd-year paper

Year 3 – present draft dissertation prospectus

Years 4 and above – present draft dissertation chapters / job talks

Our workshop schedule also allows for visits from 2-3 outside speakers each semester (selected by students) and sessions devoted to questions of scholarly and professional interest such as journal publishing, turning a dissertation into a book, preparing to go on the job market, alt-ac and non-ac careers, making the most of career and family, and dealing with failure and rejection (we’ve all been there).

A crucial supplement to our internal research programming is the Kadish Workshop in Politics, Philosophy and Law hosted by the Law School and run by Josh Cohen and one other faculty member on rotation (listed in the catalog as PS 293). We encourage all students to attend the public part of the workshop regularly and to enroll for credit when possible.