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Research Project

Working Group on Political Theology

2013 – 2014

Project Summary

These scholars sought to define and refine a coherent agenda for a long-term, trans-disciplinary research project on theology’s influence on political ideas and institutions.

Research Team

Cliff Ando

Cliff Ando

Cliff Ando

David B. and Clara E. Stern Distinguished Service Professor; Professor of Classics, History and in the College

University of Chicago

Clifford Ando’s research focuses on the histories of religion, law and government in the ancient world. His first book centered on the history of political culture in the provinces of the Roman empire, and he continues to write and advise on topics related to the provincial administration, the...

Julie Cooper

Julie Cooper

Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science

Tel Aviv University

Julie Cooper's research interests include the history of political theory; early modern political theory (especially Hobbes and Spinoza); secularism and secularization; Jewish political thought; and modern Jewish thought. She is the author of Secular Powers: Humility in Modern Political...

Andreas Glaeser

Andreas Glaeser

Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department

University of Chicago

Andreas Glaeser is a sociologist of culture with a particular interest in the construction of identities and knowledges. His work interlaces substantive interests with efforts to build social theory. In this vein, his first book develops a theory of identity formation processes in the context of...

Michèle Lowrie

Michèle Lowrie

Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in Classics and in the College

University of Chicago

Professor Lowrie’s research focuses on how Latin literature thinks about politics, particularly the ways political thought emerges from a text’s formal elements and figurative expression short of abstract conceptualization. She has published Horace’s Narrative Odes and Writing,...

William Mazzarella

William Mazzarella

Neukom Family Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College

University of Chicago

William T.S. Mazzarella writes and teaches on the political anthropology of mass publicity, critical theory, affect and aesthetics, psychoanalysis, ritual and performance, and the occult shadow of the modern. His books include Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary...

John McCormick

Man at podium

John McCormick

Professor of Political Science

University of Chicago

John P. McCormick is Professor of Political Science. His research and teaching interests include political thought in Renaissance Florence (specifically, Guicciardini and Machiavelli), 19th and 20th century continental political and social theory (with a focus on Weimar Germany and Central...

Omar M. McRoberts

Omar M. McRoberts

Associate Professor, Department of Sociology

University of Chicago

Omar M. McRoberts's scholarly and teaching interests include the sociology of religion, urban sociology, urban poverty, race, and collective action. His first book, Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban Neighborhood, is based on an ethnographic study of religious life...

Paul Mendes-Flohr

Paul Mendes-Flohr

Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History and Thought; Associate Faculty in the Department of History

University of Chicago

Paul Mendes-Flohr’s major research interests include modern Jewish intellectual history, modern Jewish philosophy and religious thought, philosophy of religion, German intellectual history, and the history and sociology of intellectuals. Together with Bernd Witte, he serves as editor-in-chief of...

Eric L. Santner

Eric L. Santner

Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies

University of Chicago

Eric L. Santner is the Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. He came to Chicago in 1996 after twelve years of teaching at Princeton University. He has been a visiting fellow at various institutions, including Dartmouth,...

Eric Slauter

Eric Slauter

Associate Professor, Department of English; Director, Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture

University of Chicago

Eric Slauter is Deputy Dean of the Humanities and the College at the University of Chicago, where he is an associate professor in the Department of English, an associate faculty member in the Divinity School, and serves as the founding director of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of...

Lisa Wedeen

Lisa Wedeen

Mary R. Morton Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the College; Co-director, Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory; Associate Faculty in Anthropology

University of Chicago

Lisa Wedeen is the author of three books: Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (1999; with a new preface, 2015); Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen (2008); and Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology,...

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