Indiana University Bloomington

[arka]

I was accepted to study political philosophy/theory here. I'm going to visit them in a couple of weeks to speak with the professors and get a better sense of the place. They are offering me full funding for 4 years, so it's likely that I'll wind up accepting, unless my wait list places call me up. It was one of the top 5 programs I was interested in when applying (in terms of correspondence between faculty and my interests) and my sense is that they do have a solid political science dept., which is always ranked 20-25th through the years.

I have also searched around in this forum's history for some opinions, but it seems that the most recent of them are from 2 years ago. So if anyone has thoughts about this place, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks!

[readeatsleep]

What are your interests within political theory?

[arka]

My specific interest is in the concept of sovereignty, and the connection between the principles of sovereignty and state-sanctioned violence. In my statement of purpose I wrote that I wanted to focus my research on a post-sovereign conception of the political, partially by drawing upon the works of Marx and Arendt. I'm especially interested in working on this idea with Jeff Isaac, who has written a lot on these thinkers as well as on democratic theory in general, and Bill Scheuerman, who works on sovereignty and international law. My more general interests are also in critical theory (Frankfurt School, Marxism, etc.) and the history of political thought (particularly from the Enlightenment on, including theories of modernity.)