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Mary G Dietz

John Evans Emerita Professor of Political Theory and Gender and Sexuality Studies

A.B: Mount Holyoke College; Ph.D.: University of California, Berkeley
Curriculum Vitae

Interests

Research Interest(s): History of Western Political Thought; Contemporary Political Theory; Democratic Theory; Feminist Theory; Interpretation of Texts

Program Area(s): Political Theory

Subfield Specialties: Critical Theory; Feminist and Gender Studies

Joint Appointment

Gender and Sexuality Studies

Biography

Mary G Dietz joined the faculty of Northwestern in 2007, from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where she was named Scholar of the College of Liberal Arts and awarded the CLA Distinguished Teacher Award. At NU she holds a joint appointment in Political Science and the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and serves on the Advisory Board of GSS and the Council of the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. From 2005-12 she was Editor of the flagship journal Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy from 2005-12. Academic fields of concentration are Political Theory (history of Western political thought; democratic theory; contemporary Anglo-American and Continental theory) and Feminist Theory. Current research interests include Aristotle, politics, and problems of empire; the politics of sexing the subject gendered-male in Hobbes’s Leviathan; and continuing studies of the political theory of Hannah Arendt.

Books

  • Turning Operations: Feminism, Arendt, and Politics (Routledge Press)
  • Between the Human and the Divine: The Political Thought of Simone Weil (Rowman and Littlefield)
  • Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory (Editor, University of Kansas Press)

Select Publications

  • “Between Polis and Empire: Aristotle’s Politics” (American Political Science Review)
  • “Machiavelli and Religion” (History of the Philosophy of Religion)
  • “Current Controversies in Feminist Theory” (Annual Review of Political Science)
  • “Feminist Receptions of Hannah Arendt” (Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt)
  • “Trapping the Prince: Machiavelli and the Politics of Deception” (American Political Science Review)

Courses taught

Undergraduate

  • Polisci 303: Modernity and Its Discontents (Late Modern Political Thought)
  • GSS 397: After Beauvoir: the Turbulence in Feminist Theory

Graduate

  • Polisci 463: Modernity and its Discontents (Late Modern Political Thought)
  • Polisci 464: Contemporary Political Theory
  • GSS 405: Advanced Feminist Theory