The Lawn at UVA
Executive Director: James W. Ceasear
The Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Virginia has just completed its third year of existence. Its first year was made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities while various private donors, including The Jack Miller Center, have underwritten it since then. The core of PCD is the 200 level undergraduate course, “The American Political Tradition,” in which students confront some of the classic texts in American political and constitutional history. Beginning with reflections on the concept of regime as understood by classical thinkers such as Aristotle, Plutarch, and Montesquieu, the course proceeds to take up such issues as the philosophic foundations of the American regime, religion and politics, constitutionalism, slavery and civil rights, and national security through the lens of both classic and contemporary authors.
The course has so far been a success story. Nearly 400 students have enrolled in PCD classes over the last three years, with each filling up quickly at the start of the semester. End of the year student evaluations have been glowing while an outside Visitor’s report for the Provost on our Department singled out this course as a real innovation in undergraduate education. The Politics Department, the report said, “has added a program on constitutional government, led by Jim Ceaser that offers an appealing model of education in constitutional governance likely to be of interest to other universities as well.” The two most recent chairs of the Department, Professors Sidney Milkis and Jeffrey Legro, have each supported this program, while the administrative staff in the department and the College of Arts and Letters have provided us with critical assistance.
The course, however, would remain untaught without the PCD Fellows hired to guide students through the important texts described above. In particular, The Jack Miller Center’s Post-doctoral Program has allowed us to hire two recent Ph.D.s, Daniel Doneson and Lynn Uzzell, to teach the class. A third, pre-doctoral fellow, Matthew Sitman, teaches the course as well. Fellows also pursue their own individual research projects – attending conferences, finishing or revising their dissertations, and writing academic essays for publication in leading journals. In short, The Jack Miller Center’s generosity has provided a remarkable opportunity both for the students of the University of Virginia, those whose education is enhanced through taking the PCD-sponsored course, and the Fellows who are given the time and resources to further their scholarly careers. What follows is an update on the three fellows your program has allowed us to support:
Lynn Uzzell, the other Jack Miller Post-doctoral Fellow, received her PhD at the end of the last academic year. In May 2008. She has since been able to pursue two major projects. Last fall, Lynn completed an essay, “Federalist 54: Ethical Sophistry?” which she hopes to submit to a journal for review very shortly. The other project consists of working towards the publication of her dissertation, “Because Men Are Not Angels: The Understanding of Human Nature Informing the United States Constitution.” To this end, Lynn has written a book proposal and submitted it to the University of Kansas Press.
Lynn presented her work publicly on two separate occasions this year. The first of these was a lecture on the concept of a “regime” that she delivered at a combined meeting of all the PLAP 225 classes. The second was to receive feedback on her essay on Federalist 54 through a PCD-sponsored working group aimed at helping move the piece along towards publication.
Daniel Doneson has seen two of his essays published this semester: an article on Leo Strauss and Martin Heidegger: “Beginning at the beginning: on the starting point of Reflection”, in Heidegger’s Jewish Followers, ed. Samuel Fleischacker (Dusquenes University Press, 2008) and “Hamlet or Hecuba: Schmitt or Benjamin” in a peer-reviewed journal of the University of Bialystok, which subsequently was reprinted in Man and his Enemies: Essays on Carl Schmitt, ed. Svetozar Minkov and Piotr Nowak (University of Bialystok, 2008). In addition, Daniel completed two essays that are shortly forthcoming: an article for a symposium on Remy Brague, entitled, “A History of Eternity: Remy’ Brague’s The Law of God,” in Perspectives on Political Science, ed. L. Trepanier; and an article on Martin Heidegger, “Heidegger’s Bodenstandigkeit beyond all Bodenstandigkeit” in Idol Anxiety, ed. A. Tugendhaft and J. Ellenbogen (Stanford, University Press, 2009 forthcoming). While in residence at UVa, he also has been working on two essays which are going to be submitted for review in the near future: “Spinoza’s Defense of Democracy: summo naturali iuere” and “Nietzsche’s Ipsomissity and the Problem of History.”
Other than these publishing efforts, Daniel has been active professionally in conference and colloquia participation. He was a discussant on a panel at APSA in Boston this fall and presented the aforementioned paper on Spinoza twice this spring: once for UVa’s political theory colloquium in March, and a second time at the Jack Miller Center conference at Georgetown University in April.
There is another activity of Daniel’s that deserves to be given special notice, given The Jack Miller Center’s emphasis on teaching undergraduates. Daniel, after a request from a number of the particularly engaged students who took his class this fall, taught a course this semester on “Aristotle and the American Regime” which was devoted to a careful study and analysis of Aristotle’s Politics and its relevance to contemporary American politics and political science.
Matthew Sitman, The PCD’s pre-doctoral fellow, has been working chiefly on his dissertation, “Redeeming Modernity: The Reformation Self and the Politics of Faith,” a study of political thought and theology in the early modern period that especially focuses on John Calvin. He is pursuing his doctorate at Georgetown University under the direction of Joshua Mitchell, Patrick Deneen, and Jean Bethke Elshtain. In addition, Matthew organized a panel for the APSA meeting this fall on the American novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson. His contribution to the panel was a paper titled “Against the Iron Cage: Marilynne Robinson’s Alternative Reading of Calvin.” The success of this panel, and the general interest surrounding Robinson’s work, led to an invitation to draft a book proposal for an edited volume of essays on Robinson.
Also, Matthew delivered two invited lectures on Calvin over the course of the academic year. The first, “Through a Glass Darkly: Politics and the Problem of Knowledge in Calvin’s Thought” was given at Calvin College in October. The second, “Against Idolatry: The Shape of Calvin’s Political Thought” was presented at Christopher Newport University on the occasion of Matthew being awarded the first annual Garrett Prize for Excellence in Graduate Studies by the Center for Faith and Citizenship, housed within CNU’s political science department.
Lastly, Matthew just presented a new paper at the New England Political Science Association annual meeting, “Towers of Babel: Michael Oakeshott, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Theological Defense of Modernity.” In addition to reworking this essay before it is sent to a journal for review, he currently is revising “Confronting the Radical Vice: Reconsidering Rousseau’s Government of Poland.”
Jefferson's Plans
In addition, all the fellows contributed to a revision of the “American Political Tradition” syllabus, which primarily consisted of updating the units of the course dealing with slavery and civil rights, contemporary ideologies, and American foreign policy. This was a substantial revision that included serious discussion about what readings the students seemed to find most intriguing, how recent events should shape the teaching of the unit on foreign policy, and, generally, how to make the course the best it possibly can be. New readings and discussion questions were added to the syllabus in time for the spring semester.
It should be noted that the fellows received excellent teaching evaluations from the students who took “The American Political Tradition” this year. In addition to Daniel, Lynn, and Matthew’s scholarly activities described above, then, the mission of teaching the American Founding and American political thought to UVA undergraduates is superbly fulfilled.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ba48a160-a6bb-4386-8cd1-68b94cce2ddc)