Political Theory @ Michigan
University of MichiganPolitical Science

This part of the site offers specific information on the following:

Introduction

The graduate program in political theory offers students a rigorous and varied training. The historical foundations of political thought form the basis of the curriculum, but students are encouraged to be creatively serious about developing their own interests in any aspect of political theory. As a result, people in the program end up with a common language with which to discuss their vastly diverse directions and research projects. Many students also come to Michigan specifically to take advantage of the broad expertise on gender and feminist theory available in the program even if it is not their primary area of interest.

As an indication of the diversity of interests and approaches in the graduate program, the following lists some recent and ongoing dissertation projects:

  • Citizen Acts: Citizenship and Political Agency in the works of Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Emma Goldman
  • The Dominion of Voice: Riot, Reason and Romance in Antebellum American Political Thought
  • Better Pericles than John Knox: Liberal Neutrality, Morality, and Community in the Political and Religious Thought of John Stuart Mill
  • Will All the Real Ones Please Stand Up?: "Authenticity" and Ascription in Identity Politics
  • Civic Friendships, Ancient and Modern
  • Encountering Liberalism: Devaluing the Economics of Racism
  • A Conceptual Guide to the Political Present: Political Order's Temporal Logic in Augustine, Hobbes, Diderot and Arendt
  • Faith in Liberalism: Exploring Religion and Democracy in the State of Israel
  • The Rise of a Concept: Judicial Independence in the American National Experiment, 1789-1833
  • In the Shadow of the Law: Race, Labor and Status in Louisiana, 1865-1913
  • Oakeshott's Ironic Modernism: The Influence of Plato and Aristotle on Oakeshott's Liberalism
  • The concept and the experience of revolution. France 1789-/Russia 1985-

Funding

With a newly revised departmental funding structure as well as the numerous resources within and outside the university, students will have ample time to focus on their own coursework and research during their graduate careers. Admission to the graduate program generally guarantees funding through five years of study, provided the student makes satisfactory progress toward his or her degree. The political science department provides the funding both as fellowship support and as salary for teaching, which students do as graduate student instructors (GSIs). This will help students prepare their teaching skills. Theory students have been particularly successful as GSIs; three have won university-wide teaching awards in recent years.

There are many sources of funding in addition to the guaranteed departmental support. In recent years, political theory students have been able to secure various amounts of support for research, travel, and summer study from inside and outside the university. Some of these include:

  • Center for the Education of Women Towsley Award (UM)
  • Charlotte Newcombe Fellowship
  • Comparative Study in Society and History, GSRA support for editorial internship
  • Earhart Foundation
  • Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship ("FLAS")
  • Gerald R. Ford Fellowship (UM Political Science)
  • Institute of the Humanities (UM)
  • Institute for Humane Studies
  • Institute for Research on Women and Gender (UM)
  • National Foundation for Jewish Culture
  • National Science Foundation GSRA support
  • Summer research collaboration (UM Political Science)
  • Sweetland Writing Center Writing Fellowship (UM)

For more information on graduate study at Michigan, visit the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies website. For information on the departmental program, visit the graduate program pages on the department's site or download the departmental list of funding sources (PDF).

Updated 6/07/06