CURRICULUM VITAE
JOSHUA M. MITCHELL
5233 Heron Way
Cambridge, MD 21613
PERSONAL:
Birth date: February 2, 1955
Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt
EDUCATION:
The University of Michigan:
B.G.S., 1980.
The University of Washington:
M.A., Sociology, 1984.
The University of Chicago:
M.A., Political Science, 1986; Ph.D., 1989.
DISSERTATION TITLE:
“The Dialectic of Politically Authoritative History: Luther, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau and the Foundations of Early Liberal Thought” (1989).
POSTDOCTORAL AFFILIATION:
University of Chicago Department of Social Science: Lecturer in the Common Core. 1989-90.
University of Chicago Divinity School: Visiting Scholar at the Institute for the Advanced Studies of Religion. 1989-90.
AFFILIATIONS and TITLES:
Assistant Professor of Political Science: George Washington University (1990-93)
Assistant Professor of Government: Georgetown University (1994-97)
Associate Professor of Government: Georgetown University (1997-2005)
Chairman: Department of Government (2002-05)
Professor of Government: Georgetown University (2005- Present)
Dean of Faculty Affairs: SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University (2005-06)
HONORS:
University of Chicago:
Dissertation support from the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation. Academic year 1988-89.
Recipient of John M. Olin Program in the History of Political Culture Fellowship. Academic year 1988-89.
Recipient of Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation Post-Doctoral support. Academic year 1989-90.
George Washington University:
Recipient of Dilthey Faculty Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Research; The George Washington University. Summer 1991.
Recipient of Dilthey Faculty Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Research; The George Washington University. Summer 1992.
Recipient of Earhart Foundation Fellowship Research Grant. Summer 1992.
Recipient of Junior Scholar Incentive Award; The George Washington University. Summer 1993.
Recipient of University Facilitating Fund Award; The George Washington University. Summer 1993.
Recipient of Earhart Foundation Fellowship Research Grant. Summer 1993.
Georgetown University:
Recipient of Earhart Foundation Fellowship Research Grant. Summer 1994.
Recipient of Mellon Junior Faculty Fellowship, Georgetown University, Spring Term, 1995.
Recipient of Earhart Foundation Fellowship Research Grant. Summer 1998.
Recipient of Georgetown University Senior Faculty Research Grant. Fall 2001.
PUBLICATIONS: (BOOKS)
Not By Reason Alone: Religion, History, and Identity in Early Modern Political Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1993).
The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future (University of Chicago Press, 1995).
Plato’s Fable: On the Mortal Condition in Shadowy Times (Princeton University Press, 2006 [forthcoming]).
PUBLICATIONS: (BOOK CHAPTERS)
“Thomas Hobbes: On Religious Liberty and Sovereignty.” In Religious Liberty in Western Thought. Edited by Noel B. Reynolds and W. Cole Durham, Jr. Atlanta, GA: Emory University Studies in Law and Religion, No. 4, 1996. Pp. 123-41.
“John Locke: A Theology of Religious Liberty.” In Religious Liberty in Western Thought. Pp. 143-60.
“Through A Glass Darkly: Luther and Calvin on the Limits of Reason.” In Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration. Edited by Alan Levine. New York: Lexington Books, 1999. Pp. 21-50.
“The Trajectories of Religious Renewal in America: Tocquevillean Thoughts.” In A Nation under God?—Essays on the Future of Religion in American Public Life. Co-edited by R. Bruce Douglass and Joshua Mitchell. New York: Rowan & Littlefield, 2000. Pp. 17-43.
“Confessions of a Former Arabist.” In The Sacred and the Sovereign: Religion and International Relations. Edited by John Carlson and Erik Owens. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003. Pp. 277-84.
“Tocqueville on Democratic Religious Experience.” In The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville. Edited by Cheryl Welch. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006 [forthcoming]. Pp. __-__.
“It is Not Good for Man to Be Alone: Tocqueville on Friendship.” In Friendship and Politics: Essays in Political Thought. Edited by John Von Heyking and Richard Avramenko. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2006 [forthcoming]. Pp. __-__.
PUBLICATIONS: (ARTICLES)
Review of Politics, Vol. 52, No. 1, 1990, pp. 64-83. “John Locke and the Theological Foundation of Liberal Toleration: A Christian Dialectic of History.”
Journal of Politics, Vol. 53, No. 3, 1991, pp. 676-700. “Luther and Hobbes on the Question: Who Was Moses, Who Was Christ?”
Journal of Religion, Vol. 72, No. 3, 1992, pp. 351-65. “The Equality of All Under the One in Luther and Rousseau: Thoughts on Christianity and Political Theory.”
APSR, Vol. 86, No. 3, 1992, pp. 688-95. “Protestant Thought and Republican Spirit: How Luther Enchanted the World.”
Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 3, 1993, pp. 78-100. “Hobbes and the Equality of All Under the One.”
PUBLICATIONS: (POPULAR PRESS):
The Washington Times, January 11, 1996, Section A15. “Do Conservatives Really Understand Tocqueville?”
Academe, Vol. 82, No. 6 (November-December 1996), pp. 29-32. “Of Answers Ruled Out: Religion in Academic Life.”
The Washington Post, Sunday, August 10, 2003; Section B07. “Not All Yearn to Be Free.”
BOOK REVIEWS:
Robert P. Kraynak, History and Modernity in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). APSR, Vol. 86, No. 2, pp. 513-15.
A. P. Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). International Hobbes Association Newsletter, No. 15, November 1992, pp. 8-11.
Timothy Fuller, “The Idea of Christianity in Hobbes’s Leviathan,” in Jewish Political Studies Review 4:2 [Fall 1992]. International Hobbes Association Newsletter, Nos. 16-17, November 1993, pp. 1-4.
Sanford Kessler, Tocqueville’s Civil Religion: American Christianity and the Prospects for Freedom (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). Journal of Politics, Vol. 57 (August 1995), No. 3, pp. 873-75.
John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Review of Politics, Vol. 57 (Fall 1995 ), No. 4, pp. 734-36.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir on Pauperism (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Publishing, 1997). Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Vol. 28, No. 1, 1998, pp. 3-4 of Religion and Values in Public Life Insert.
“The Use of Augustine, After 1989.” Review of Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Jean Bethke Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). Political Theory, Vol. 27, No. 5, October 1999, pp. 694-705.
David Walsh, The Third Millennium: Reflections on Faith and Reason (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999). APSR, Vol. 94, No. 4, pp. 936-37.
Edward G. Andrew, Conscience, Law, and Reason (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). Review of Politics, Vol. 64 (Spring 2002), No. 2, pp. 358-59.
Cheryl B. Welch, De Tocqueville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). APSR, Vol. 96, No. 2, pp. 414-15.
Michael P. Zuckert, Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002). First Things, No. 129, January 2003, pp. 62-67; No. 132, April 2003, pp. 12-14.
John Witte, Jr. Legal Teachings of the Protestant Reformation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Emory Law Journal, Vol. 52, No. 2, Spring 2003, pp. 953-61.
PAPERS:
APSA 1989 National Meeting. “Locke: Toleration and the Dialectic of History.”
Southwest Political Science Association 1990 Meeting. “Luther and Hobbes on the Question: Who Was Moses, Who Was Christ?”
APSA 1990 National Meeting. “Christianity and Counter-Christianity in Rousseau.”
APSA 1991 National Meeting. “The Politics of (Biblical) History: Hobbes and Locke.”
APSA 1991 National Meeting. “Modern Theory Begins Here: Luther and the Politics of the Hidden God.”
APSA 1992 National Meeting. “Christianity and Democracy: Tocqueville’s View.”
APSA 1993 National Meeting. “Identity and Difference in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.”
APSA 1994 National Meeting. “The Politics of Mediation: Tocqueville’s View.”
APSA 1995 National Meeting. “The Augustinian Self.”
APSA 1996 National Meeting. “Equality and Tolerance: Political, Not Metaphysical,” and “Through a Glass Darkly: Luther, Calvin, and the Limits of Reason.”
APSA 1997 National Meeting. “The Liberal Politics of Original Sin: Afterthoughts from Reinhold Niebuhr.”
Southern Political Science Association 1998 Meeting: “The Liberal Political Theology of Jean Bethke Elshtain.”
APSA 2000 National Meeting: “Voegelin and the Scandal of Luther: Philosophy, Faith, and the Modern Age.”
APSA 2001 National Meeting: “The Early Writings of Michael Oakeshott.”
WORK IN PROGRESS:
I am currently involved in book project entitled, Reinhold Niebuhr and the Politics of Hope, at the request of Jean Bethke Elshtain, co-editor of a series to be published by Rowan and Littlefield called, “Twentieth Century Political Thought.”
TEACHING INTERESTS:
History of Political Thought, Political Theology, Philosophy of History, and Social Theory.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
The University of Chicago (1989-90):
Social Science 101 (“Political Economy”); 102 (“Individual and Society”); 103 (“Interpretations of Culture”).
The George Washington University (1990-93):
Political Science 105 “Ancient Political Thought” (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine); 107 “Modern Political Thought” (Hobbes, Locke, and Mill); 106 “Psyche and History” (Rousseau, Nietzsche, Freud); 110 “American Political Thought” (Tocqueville); 192 “Proseminar” (Rousseau’s Emile).
Georgetown University (1993-Present): Government 117 “Elements of Political Thought” (Plato, Augustine, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Nietzsche); 208 “Plato’s Republic”; 286 “Junior Honors Seminar (Rousseau, Tocqueville); 407 “Early Modern Political Thought” (Luther, Hobbes, Locke, Mill); 440 “Psyche and History” (Rousseau, Nietzsche, Freud); 481 “Tocqueville’s Democracy in America”; 505 “Fundamentals of Political Theory” (Graduate level, texts vary). INAF Proseminar 100 “Reason, History, Democracy” (Rousseau, Smith, Kant, Tocqueville, Marx, Weber).
LANGUAGE: German
MEMBERSHIPS:
American Political Science Association.
National Association of Scholars
RELATED ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES:
Smithsonian Institution: Guest Lecturer in the Resident Associates Program (Spring 1992).
Abade Correira da Serra Chair, Luso-American Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal March 8-16, 2002: Lectures on Tocqueville.
New Hampshire Humanities Council: Frontiers of Knowledge Lecture: “The Fragility of Freedom” (October 27, 2002)
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Professor Peter Bercowitz: George Mason Law School.
Professor Eldon Eisenach: Department of Political Science, The University of Tulsa.
Professor Jean Bethke Elshtain: The Divinity School, University of Chicago.
Professor Stephen Ericson: Department of Philosophy, Pomona College.
Professor Tim Fuller: Dean of the College, Colorado College.
Professor Stephen Holmes: NYU Law School.
Professor Robin Lovin: Dean, The Theological School, Southern Methodist University.
Professor Steven Smith: Department of Political Science, Yale University.
Professor William Stevenson, Department of Political Science, Calvin College.
Professor Tracy Strong: Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego.
Professor Nathan Tarcov: Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago.
2