| 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. |
Scholarly literature suggests two reasons for the recent re-emergence of political theology across the social sciences and humanities, challenging what many thought was an outdated modality of inquiry. The first is a growing concern that the practical and theoretical subordination of politics to a service function for markets, which goes hand in hand with an isolation of individuals, deprives human beings of their potential to shape their future in collaboration with others. The second is a suspicion that the research orientation of much contemporary social science remains beholden to a positivist epistemology that can describe and analyze only what already exists, and thus (at least unwittingly) supports the subordination of politics by underplaying the creative potential of human beings to reimagine more satisfying lives in the company of others. Political theology promises to address these concerns by wondering about the orientation of politics to guiding values, and by searching for enduring historical influence of theological ideas on political concepts and the formation of political institutions. This project brought faculty from Classics, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Divinity, Germanic Studies, and English together with invited visiting scholars for bi-weekly workshops to define and refine a coherent agenda for a long-term, trans-disciplinary research project on political theology.
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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,...
