Board of Directors

DAVID MAPEL (M.Sc., London School of Economics, 1978, M.A. and Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, 1983). Research and teaching interests: political theory and international relations. Specializations: contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy; theories of social justice; political obligation and authority; international ethics.

Selected publications:

Social Justice Reconsidered (Illinois, 1989)

"Contingency and the Idea of Civil Association," Political Theory, 1990

"Voluntarism and Democratic Theory", Polity, 1990

"Practical Judgment and the Plurality of Value in International Relations," The Journal of Politics, 1990

"Contractarianism in International Ethics" and "Convergence and Divergence" both in Traditions of International Ethics, co-edited with Terry Nardin (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

"Realism and the Ethics of War and Peace," in The Ethics of War and Peace: Diverse Religions and Secular Perspectives, edited by Terry Nardin (Princeton University Press, 1996)

"Justice, Diversity and Law" in The Constitution of International Society, co-edited with Terry Nardin (Princeton University Press 2001)

"Coerced Moral Agents? Individual Responsibility for Military Service," The Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 6 (June, 1998), 171-89.

"Revising the Doctrine of Double Effect," Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 18, no. 3 (2001), 259-72.

Skepticism, Individuality and Freedom: The Reluctant Liberalism of Richard Flathman, co.ed., Bonnie Honig ( University of Minnesota Press, 2002).

“Innocent Attackers: A Comment on David Rodin’s War and Self-Defense.” Ethics and International Affairs, Vol 18(, no. 1 (2004), 81-6

“Fairness, Political Obligation and Benefits Across Borders.” Polity, Vol. 37, no. 1 (2004), 425-42.

“The Right of National Defense,” International Studies Perspectives (2007) 8, 1 –15.

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VANESSA BAIRD (Ph.D., University of Houston, 2000) joined the faculty of the University of Colorado in 2000 after completing her graduate education at the University of Houston. Her undergraduate education centered on the study of German literature and she studied at the University of Siegen, in Germany. She has published her work in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Political Psychology, Political Studies and Comparative Political Studies, and Social Science Quarterly.

Her book, Answering the Call of the Court: How Justices and Litigants Set the Supreme Court's Agenda, was published in 2007 by the University of Virginia Press. Her research interests include understanding the process by which courts acquire legitimacy, the causes and effects of the perception of procedural justice, and the mechanism by which courts can rely on extra-judicial resources to amass political power.

Her newest research focuses on the effect of political violence on non-violent political action in Russia, specifically with regard to ending the cycle of ethnically motivated violence.

COURSES:
Introduction to Data Analysis (Graduate Seminar)
Diversity, Disagreement and Democracy: An Introduction to the Practice of Dialogue Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
Critical Thinking Senior Seminar on Law and Society

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HORST MEWES received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1970, did undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Hamburg and University of Heidelberg in West Germany. Prof. Mewes has taught regularly as a visiting professor at various German universities.

Professor Mewes' specialization is contemporary European political philosophy, with emphasis on action theories (like Hannah Arendt) and theories of practical reasoning, both classic and modern (ranging from Leo Strauss and McIntyre to Habermas), including theories of hermeneutics (Gadamer). Prof. Mewes's most recent research focus has been on problems of citizenship and its relation to private liberties in modern liberal democracy. Professor Mewes has published both in German and English, including a book on American political thought and politics (in German), articles and book chapters on the German environmental movements, and articles on political theory.

Selected publications:

Kielmansegg, Peter G., Horst Mewes, and Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt, editors. 1995. Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: German Emigrés and American Political Thought after World War II. Cambridge University Press.

COURSES:
PSCI 2004: Survey in Western Political Thought
PSCI 4024: Senior Seminar in Political Theory
PSCI 4714: Liberalism and Its Critics
PSCI 7004: Seminar in Political Theory

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MICHAELE FERGUSON (PhD, Harvard University, 2003) received her A.B. in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from Bryn Mawr College in 1994, and her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University in 2003.

She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Sharing Democracy. This book critically examines a dominant presumption in democratic theory that democracies can only work where citizens share something in common – whether that is a nationality, a set of political values, or the status of citizenship. In place of this presumption, Ferguson develops a nonfoundationalist account of how we share democracy with others. This project has been supported by a Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center and a Junior Faculty Development Award from CU.

Her interests include democratic theory, feminist theory, the role of truth in politics, and the philosophy of language. Her most recent publication explores all of these themes via an analysis of the use of feminist rhetoric to justify the U.S. foreign policy of building democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq: "W Stands for Women: Feminism and Security Rhetoric in the Post-9/11 Bush Administration," which appeared in Politics & Gender in 2005. She is also the co-editor with Lori Marso of Union College of a volume of essays further developing these themes entitled W Stands for Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Has Shaped a New Politics of Gender (Duke University Press, 2007). Her work has appeared in Hypatia, Theory & Event, The European Legacy, and Philosophy in Review.

Together with Professors Baird and Mapel, she is the recipient of a Ford Foundations Difficult Dialogues Initiative stipend http://www.difficultdialogues.org/projects/and a grant from CU’s Institute for Civic and Ethical Engagement to fund the development of a new service-learning course focused on the cultivation of the dialogue skills necessary for effective citizenship in diverse societies. The course, “Diversity, Disagreement, and Democracy,” was taught in Spring and Fall 2007. She also teaches courses in the history of political thought, democratic theory, feminist theory, and multiculturalism.

Selected publications
“Sharing Without Knowing: Collective Identity in Feminist and Multiculturalist Theory”, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 2007

“W Stands for Women: Feminism and Security Rhetoric in the Post-9/11 Bush Administration”, Politics & Gender 2005

COURSES:
PSCI 4024: Justice and the Politics of Difference
PSCI 4028: Diversity, Disagreement, and Democracy
PSCI 4028: Feminist Political Theory
PSCI 4028: Sex, Power, and Politics

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KAREN TRACY's focus on language and social interaction problems in institutional, small-group settings has led her to study academic colloquia, citizen calls to 911 and the police, and deliberative difficulties in school board meetings. She is in the beginning stage of collecting data about jury deliberation.

She is the author of Colloquium: Dilemmas of Academic Discourse, and has edited multiple books and special journal issues. She has contributed articles to Communication Monographs, Human Communication Research, Discourse Studies, Journal of Language, and Social Psychology. Her B.A. (1972, Pennsylvania State University) and M.A. (1974, Bowling Green State University) were in Speech and Language Pathology; her Ph.D. (1981, University of Wisconsin) was in Communication Arts.

She taught at Temple University prior to joining the faculty at CU and is currently editor of the journal Research on Language and Social Interaction.

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GERARD A. HAUSER, College Professor of Distinction, specializes in rhetorical theory and criticism. His research focuses on rhetorical theory, dissident rhetoric, and the interaction between formal and vernacular rhetorics as they shape and are shaped by public spheres. His theoretical and critical work includes theorizing the rhetorical formation of publics and civil society as constitutive of rhetorical democracy, rhetorical analysis using the reticulate model of public spheres, and study of vernacular rhetoric.

He is an NCA Distinguished Scholar and an RSA Fellow. He is recipient of RSA’s George E. Yoos Distinguished Service Award. He has received RSA's Kneupper Award for best article (2000), and the NCA Public Address Division's 2000 Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award for best critical book (2000). He is Editor of Philosophy and Rhetoric. He is a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award from the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State University. Among the doctoral dissertations he has directed, three have received NCA's Gerald R. Miller Award. He received his B.A. in English from Canisius College (1965) and his M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1970) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Currently he is investigating the moral vernacular rhetorics of political prisoners. This project focuses on the rhetorical mechanisms of resistance used by political prisoners. It traces their culturally based vernaculars of ordinary virtues and vices.

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The LeRoy Keller Center 333 UCB  |  Boulder, CO 80309-0333  |  Phone: 303-492-6662 Email: mapel@colorado.edu