DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Interests

Research Interest(s): Early Modern Political Theory; Textual Hermeneutics; Marxism and Critical Theory; History of Political Science; Civic Engagement

Program Area(s): Political Theory

Regional Specialization(s): United States; Europe

Subfield Specialties: Critical Theory

Biography

James Farr joined the department in 2007, having taught at Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. He served as Chair of the Department from 2008 to 2013. For fifteen years, he was also the Director of the Chicago Field Studies Program, an internship-and-seminar experience for undergraduates investigating the modern workplace and civic engagement. Farr taught political theory and the history of early modern and contemporary political thought, as well as the history and philosophy of social science. He has published some seventy-five articles or chapters on Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Marx, Lieber, Dewey, Lasswell and Popper, as well as on conceptual change and on social capital. He is the coeditor of seven books, including The General Will: The History of a Concept (Cambridge, 2015) The Cambridge Companion to the Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, 2015), and, most recently, John Locke and Travel Writing (Springer, 2025). He is currently completing essays on John Locke and John Dewey, as well as on the history of American political science.