Political Science faculty members to celebrate published scholarship

Members of the Political Science faculty will celebrate an especially productive year of book publishing at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 5, in the Tea Room in the Social Science Research building.

Faculty colleagues in other departments are invited to join the festivities.

“This is a department of books—of signature books,” said Bernard E. Harcourt, Chair of Political Science and the Julius Kreeger Professor of Law. “Considering the size of UChicago’s Political Science Department compared to its peers—we stand at about 30 faculty members—the scholarly rate of production is simply astounding.”

The Political Science faculty members and their books being recognized at the event are Cathy Cohen, Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2011); Bernard Harcourt, The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (Harvard University Press, 2011); Gary Herrigel, Manufacturing Possibilities: Creative Action and Industrial Recomposition in the United States, Germany, and Japan (Oxford University Press, 2010); John McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2010); John Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics (Oxford University Press, 2011); Eric Oliver, The Paradoxes of Integration: Race, Neighborhood, and Civic Life in Multiethnic America (University of Chicago Press, 2010); Robert Pape and James Feldman, Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Suicide Terrorism & How to Stop It (University of Chicago Press, 2010); Dan Slater, Ordering  Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press 2010); and the late Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice (Oxford University Press, 2011).

The books cross a wide range of fields and employ multiple research methods, Harcourt pointed out. These methods include archival, interpretive, qualitative and quantitative approaches, case studies and sophisticated statistical models.

“The list reflects our depth, our pluridisciplinarity, and areas where we are, without question, the strongest department in the country,” he added.

The research that went into publishing these books also provided opportunities for graduate students to work closely with faculty as they wrote about the topics they explored.