Maxwell Lectures in Political Theory
The Neal A. Maxwell Lecture in Political Theory and Contemporary Politics
2024: “The Chicago Women’s Liberation Union and Feminist Political Imagination."
Michaele Ferguson, University of Colorado
A video of the lecture can be viewed here.
Commentators
Lorna Bracewell, Flagler College
Kathi Weeks, Duke University
2023: “I, Too, Sing America: Black Patriotism from Frederick Douglass to Whitney
Houston,"
Simon Stow, William & Mary
A video of the lecture is available here.
Commentators
Michaele Ferguson, University of Colorado
Demetra Kasimis, University of Cambridge
2022: “More Beautiful than Democracy: Toni Morrison and the Possibility of a Shareable
World,”
Lawrie Balfour, University of Virginia
A video of the lecture is available here.
Read the essay and two responses 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
Cristina Beltrán, New York University; Char Miller, George Mason University