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Career and Accomplishments

Jodi Dean is a professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, making her the only candidate for the APSA Council this year who teaches at a liberal arts college.  If elected, she will be a powerful spokesperson for methodological pluralism, for regular competitive elections in APSA, and for the interests of the many outstanding political scientists teaching at non-PhD-granting institutions.

Dean’s main teaching interests are political theory, women’s studies, and digital media and politics.  She has published over 50 articles and book chapters and authored the following five books:

Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics (Duke, forthcoming).
Žižek’s Politics (Routledge, 2006).
Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy (Cornell, 2002).
Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace (Cornell, 1998).
Solidarity of Strangers: Feminism After Identity Politics (University of California, 1996).

Dean has an exceptional record of administrative service.  In APSA she has served on the Committee on the Status of Lesbians and Gays in the Profession and as annual meeting program chair for Division 2, Foundations of Political Theory.  She is also the co-editor of the journal Theory and Event and a member of the executive committee of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities.  At Hobart and William Smith she has chaired the Department of Political Science and the Committee on the Faculty. 

Jodi Dean’s scholarship embodies the values that inspire the Perestroika movement and she has all the qualifications to make a distinguished contribution to the APSA Council.

Statement of Views

I support competitive elections in the American Political Science Association. Competitive elections are vital to the association’s ability to respond to the concerns of all its members.  Politics, higher education, and political science are all facing tumultuous changes. Competitive elections can strengthen open debate on the best ways to understand these changes and meet the challenges they present.

If elected to serve on the Executive Council of the American Political Science Association, I will be guided by three key concerns:

1. Advancing methodological pluralism, interdisciplinary inquiry, and problem-driven research;
2. Enhancing APSA’s responsiveness to the concerns of non-Ph.D granting institutions, including liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, and community colleges;
3. Responding to threats to academic freedom.