Politeia

Politeia, formerly known as the Dirty Leviathans, is Stanford’s interdepartmental political theory organization for graduate students and post-docs sponsored by the Center. Its goal is to cultivate community and intellectual exchange among Stanford political theorists and to create space for informal workshopping and conversation about texts and ideas. To that end, Politeia:

  • Hosts the annual Stanford Graduate Political Theory Conference, which brings political theory graduate students to our campus for a weekend of moderated paper workshops and informal conversation.

  • Hosts an annual retreat where participants discuss early-stage work.

  • Maintains a listserv (political_theory_phd) for sharing announcements, events, and other relevant information for political theorists.

  • Convenes happy hours and other informal meetups.

  • Sponsors ongoing reading groups during the academic year.

Graduate students and postdocs from any Stanford department are welcome at Politeia events. We believe that political theory is an irreducibly interdisciplinary activity, and our interests span across political science, philosophy, history, classics, legal studies, language and literature studies, and religious studies, among others. Analytic, continental, historical, interpretive, and empirical approaches to political thought are all well represented in Politeia.

Call for Papers: Political Theory Conference for Grad Students

The political science and philosophy graduate students at Stanford University will host a political theory conference on February 10-11, 2023 in person.

We are delighted to announce that the keynote speaker will be Professor Tae-Yeoun Keum (University of California, Santa Barbara).

Accepted graduate students will be invited to present their papers in panel format to an interdisciplinary group of faculty, post-docs, and students. Papers from all themes and topics in political theory will be accepted.

Submissions are due by November 6th and acceptances will be announced by early December. Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words using this form.

For those traveling, food and housing, as well as a small travel stipend, will be provided, thanks to generous support from the Stanford Vice Provost for Graduate Education and the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. Please send any questions to Alexandra Minsk at aminsk [at] stanford.edu (aminsk[at]stanford[dot]edu).