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Dean Mathiowetz Home  Directory Dean Mathiowetz
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Dean Mathiowetz
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Title: |
Assistant Professor of Politics |
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Email: |
dpmath@ucsc.edu |
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Phone: |
(831) 459-2029 Office
(831) 459-3125 Fax |
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Office: |
158 Merrill Faculty Annex |
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Office Hours: |
Wednesdays, 2-4 pm. (I encourage you to sign up for a time on the sheet posted outside my office.) |
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| Research Focus | |
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Dean Mathiowetz studies counternarratives of modernity that lie neglected in the foundations of early modern thought. His research reaches broadly into philosophies of language; theories of affect; Aristotelian political philosophy; early modern political debates and philosophy (especially Thomas Hobbes); classical theories of political economy; hermeneutics, interpretation, and non-positivist methods of political inquiry; neoliberal governmentality; and contemporary theories of agency, personality, and subjectivity.
Mathiowetz's current research turns to theories of affect and the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes to re-evaluate shifting perspectives on luxury in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political economy, theory, and debate. Noting how the sense of touch has been written out of modern political economy's treatment of luxury, Mathiowetz argues that political theory has been similarly liable to misunderstand the distinctively haptic pleasures that make luxury so morally, commercially, and politically potent. Political theory has also, therefore, been insensate to the peculiar perils that luxury poses for the realization of democratic aims, namely the power of luxury to transform desires for difference into desires for hierarchy.
Mathiowetz will be presenting the findings of this research at the Political Theory and the Sensorium Conference at Trent University in May, and at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Toronto in September.
Mathiowetz's first book, Appeals to Interest: Language and the Shaping of Political Agents, investigates the language of interest in politics from historical and grammatical perspectives. So doing, it elaborates the critical and radical democratic insight that appeals to interest in politics work toward the active shaping of agents in ways that depend not on liberal autonomy, but rather on differences and contestation. The book is currently under contract with the Pennsylvania State University Press. [Get Table of Contents]
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"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it." -Bertrand Russell |
| Selected Publications | |
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"'Interest' is a Verb: Arthur Bentley and the Language of Interest," Political Research Quarterly 61, no. 4 (December 2008) [Get Article]
"The Juridical Subject of 'Interest'," Political Theory 35, no. 4 (August 2007), pp. 468-493 [Get Article]
“Political Symbolism and Pop Art: ‘Property’ and Representation in Texas vs. Johnson,” Critical Sense 7, no. 2 (Spring 1999) pp. 39-70 [Get Article] |
| Courses Taught | |
POLI-105A-01 - Ancient Political Thought
POLI-115-01 - Foundations of Political Economy
POLI-190Y-01 - Political Theory of Luxury
POLI-200A-01 - Interpretive Methods
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| Education History | |
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Ph.D., Political Science. University of California at Berkeley. 2003
B.A., Political Science and Economics. Summa Cum Laude. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. 1995 |
| Long Description | |
ALL COURSES TAUGHT:
Citizenship and Action (POLI 4): What does a citizen do? Uses political theory to answer this question as it relates to a number of issues, such as voting rights, immigration, gay marriage, and revolution. Draws on texts ranging from Aristotle to contemporary legal and cultural debates, to bear on the relationship of citizen action and identity. Other readings include Thoreau, Ellison, Rousseau, Marx, Arendt, and Socrates. [Get Previous Syllabus]
Ancient Political Thought (POLI 105A): Ancient political ideas in context of tension between democracy and empire, emergence of the psyche, and shift from oral to written culture. Emphasis on Athens, with Hebrew, Roman, and Christian departures and interventions. Includes Sophocles, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Cicero, the Bible, and Augustine. (Next offered Fall 2009) [Get Previous Syllabus]
Theoretical Foundations of Political Economy (POLI 115): Examines how ideas about labor, rights, exchange, capital, consumption, the state, production, poverty, luxury, morality, procreation, and markets were handled in political-economic discourse from 1690–1936. Readings include Locke, Mandeville, Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, J.S. Mill, Hegel, Marx, Veblen, and Keynes. Particular focus given to theoretical origins of and justifications for property, colonialism, and the formation of gender and class differences. (Next offered Spring 2010) [Get Previous Syllabus]
The Juridical and the Political (POLI 190B): What kinds of contest and decision are intrinsic to politics, and which are inimical to political order? How has liberalism succeeded and failed in sustaining contest and decision? Students examine works written prior to the liberal period (Hobbes), in response to it (Hegel and Schmitt) and finally, a 20th-century liberal revival (Rawls), and discuss rights, conscience, political obligation, war, and the state. (Next offered Winter 2010) [Get Previous Syllabus]
Language and Power (POLI 200A): Examines intersections of philosophy of language, language philosophy, political inquiry, and politics. How can we read texts and discourses in textually and historically grounded ways that are nonetheless relevant to urgent political questions? Must these readings be compatible with a democratic ethos? If so, how? (Next offered Winter 2010) [Get Previous Syllabus]
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Students writing papers in my courses may find it helpful to consult these guidelines. |
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