Event Host: Department of Political Science
Short Description: If people across the political spectrum agree on anything this year, it's that 2016 is not a "normal" election. The rise of populism in both the Republican and Democratic parties, an explosion of rancorous resentment toward others, an enthusiasm for "telling it like it is" regardless of what's said – how can political theory help us make sense of these developments? Join us for a discussion with political theorists Markovits, Valdez and Benjamin McKean as we consider these topics and more.
If people across the political spectrum agree on anything this year, it's that 2016 is not a "normal" election. The rise of populism in both the Republican and Democratic parties, an explosion of rancorous resentment toward others, an enthusiasm for "telling it like it is" regardless of what's said – how can political theory help us make sense of these developments? Join us for a discussion with political theorists Markovits, Valdez and Benjamin McKean as we consider these topics and more.
Elizabeth Markovits is associate professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College. Her research interests range from ancient Greek political thought to contemporary feminist and democratic theory. She is the author of The Politics of Sincerity: Frank Speech, Plato, and Democratic Judgment (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008). Her writing on this election has appeared in the Washington Post and she has also published in the Journal of Political Philosophy, the American Political Science Review and the online journal POROI (Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry). She has also worked on problems of participatory parity for women in the contemporary United States and how public policy reform, especially reforms affecting the social organization of carework, can lead to more radical change in gender equality; this work, co-authored with Susan Bickford (UNC at Chapel Hill) appeared in Perspectives on Politics in 2013.
Inés Valdez is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the Ohio State University. Her research agenda is centered on the problem of racial, gender, and religious difference within political theory. Questions that animate her research include: How is difference constructed politically? What are its effects on democratic politics? How does attending to difference require us to conceptualize basic concepts of political theory — including freedom, democracy and cosmopolitanism — differently? Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Political Studies; Politics, Groups, and Identities; the American Political Science Review; and Political Research Quarterly.
Benjamin McKean is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the Ohio State University. His research considers how our habitual attitudes about domestic and international politics can express our freedom (or lack of it), particularly in connection with questions about global justice, populism and the relationship of political theory to actual politics. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Political Theory and the American Political Science Review and he has written on the election for the Monkey Cage Blog.
