Department of Government

The Department of Government is pleased to announce its Ph.D. candidates for academic appointments.

Political Theory

Craig French

Craig French is a PhD candidate in political theory. He is interested in a broad range of themes and thinkers in both the history of political thought and in contemporary political theory. At the moment, he is mostly preoccupied with debates about globalization, cosmopolitanism and global justice. He is writing about these topics in a dissertation entitled "Borders, Boundaries and Justice: A Study on the Grounds of Cosmopolitics." You can find more information about his research, as well as further biographical information, at the following website: http://www12.georgetown.edu/students/cpf9/GradStudWeb/Home.html

Aside from his dissertation, Craig is also interested more generally in liberal theory and its critics, distributive justice and the "equality of what?" debate, agonism (in value pluralism and conceptions of the political), critical theory, nationalism and multiculturalism, normative authority and political legitimacy, and the writings of George Orwell.

Justin Litke

Justin B. Litke, a Ph.D. candidate in political theory, is concentrating on American political thought in his doctoral work. His dissertation, “American Exceptionalism: From Exemplar to Empire,” argues that much of the social science literature on the topic has misunderstood the phenomenon. The idea of American exceptionalism begins inchoately with the Puritan conception of New England as an exemplar to be imitated by the whole world. This conception undergoes changes in the founding and civil war periods until, with the Progressives, the idea of American exceptionalism comes to justify a kind of idealistic imperialism. This sobering, alternative view of American exceptionalism has implications for political theory, American government, and American foreign policy.

Eager to continue this research along with other projects, Justin is also an enthusiastic teacher with a deep knowledge of the history of political thought. His familiarity with most major figures in the history of philosophy and his experience teaching and lecturing at Georgetown make him a versatile asset to any department. He looks forward to applying to a wide range of colleges and universities, using his flexibility and passion for being a scholar and teacher to help fill the needs of his department. He lives happily with his wife near Capitol Hill.

Christopher McClure

Christopher McClure is an ABD PhD candidate, expected to defend in the summer of 2010. His focus is the history of political thought, and comparative political theory; especially Islamic political thought. In addition to his two peer-reviewed publications, Mr. McClure has earned three Earhart Fellowships and recently won the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Doctoral Award. He was also selected for a highly competitive teaching assistantship at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, and is currently teaching in Doha.

His dissertation, “The Politics of Mortality; A Work of Comparative Political Theory,” examines the political implications of various ways of thinking about mortality. His contention is that there is something unique in the modern Western view of death and that liberalism can be enriched both by an understanding of this fact and from a deeper knowledge of both critical and non-Western perspectives on this view. The initial chapters will examine Hobbes’s reinterpretation of the Christian view of hell and his manipulation of his readers’ anxiety and views on war, honor and the fear of death. Next he discusses Heidegger, whose reinterpretation of mortality and critique of modern rationalism holds out the possibility for a new form of piety. He concludes with a chapter on Rousseau, who seems to deny that the fear of death is natural and views it as an obstacle to a well-lived life and to true humanity. 

International Relations

Philipp C. Bleek

Philipp C. Bleek is a PhD candidate in international relations, focused on international security issues. His dissertation, “Assessing Reactive Proliferation: Why Nuclear Dominoes Rarely Fall,” explores whether and under what conditions states pursue or acquire nuclear weapons in response to rival state proliferation. He explores these questions using quantitative hazard modeling and qualitative case study-based analysis. Because of the policy-relevance of this topic, in particular as it relates to Iranian and North Korean proliferation and possible further proliferation in the Middle East and Asia, as of July 2009 Bleek has briefed on his dissertation at the U.S. Naval Academy, United Kingdom Atomic Weapons Establishment, German Bundestag (Federal Parliament), and to academic and think tank audiences in Washington, New York, California, Berlin, and Paris.

Beginning in September 2009, Bleek will be joint pre-doctoral fellow in International Security and Managing the Atom Programs at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. At Georgetown, he recently taught an advanced undergraduate seminar on nuclear weapons policy and politics as a Jill Hopper Memorial Fellow, and has also been an instructor in the Department of Defense Senior Leader Development Program for rising mid-career civilians. He has also been a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a non-resident fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and a Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow, all in Washington, and a visiting scholar at the JFK Institute at the Freie Universität and visiting fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute, both in Berlin.

His research interests include all aspects of the causes, consequences, and mitigation of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as various dimensions of the biological weapons threat, international security issues more broadly, and U.S.-European relations. In addition to English, he is fluent in German. His publications include, among others, “Why Do States Proliferate? Quantitative Analysis of the Pursuit and Acquisition of Nuclear Weapons” in William Potter (ed.), Forecasting Proliferation: The Role of Theory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, forthcoming fall 2009); “Minimizing Civil Highly-Enriched Uranium Stocks by 2015: A Forward-Looking Assessment of U.S.-Russian Cooperation” (with Laura Holgate) in The Future of the Nuclear Security Environment 2015 (U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Sciences, published in English and Russian, spring 2009); “After an Attack: Preparing Citizens for Bioterrorism” with Richard Danzig and Rachel Kleinfeld (Center for a New American Security, June 2007); and “Global Cleanout: An Emerging Response to the Civil Nuclear Material Threat” (Harvard University and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, September 2004).

Jennifer Heeg Maruska

Jennifer Heeg Maruska is an ABD PhD candidate in International Relations, expected to defend and graduate in the 2009-10 school year. She is currently a full-time faculty member at Texas A&M University at Qatar, where she teaches courses in World Politics, Politics of Global Inequality, and American Politics. Jennifer's dissertation is an application of critical security theory to the Gulf region (specifically, the securitization of migration in Qatar). She primarily uses and writes about qualitative methodologies, and her dissertation tests the utility of photography as a possible method in political science. She has published in several areas including the intersection between popular culture and U.S. foreign policy, feminist IR epistemology and methodology, and the future of human rights, security, and democratization in the Gulf.

Jennifer focuses on creating an active learning environment in her classrooms, often running simulations and other group activities. She concentrates on creating assessment methods that allow students to demonstrate deeper levels of knowledge analysis and synthesis.  Jennifer is interested in teaching courses in a broad array of topics including IR theory, international security, U.S. foreign policy, political/economic development and globalization, Middle East/Gulf studies, critical and feminist theory, the "clash of civilizations" thesis, film and politics, and political science methodology. CV, references, current and past syllabi, and teaching evaluations are available upon request.

Comparative Government

American Government