Joel Alden Schlosser

An award-winning teacher and scholar, Joel Alden Schlosser is a political theorist whose research follows the late Sheldon Wolin (his teacher’s teacher) by seeking to make the history of political thought relevant to the present. In all his research he strives to provide a way to understand and to criticize contemporary political life by using the concepts and vocabulary that since antiquity have sustained concern for what Wolin called “the possibilities of collectivity, common action and shared purpose.” This commitment has led to sustained research into the ancient Athenian democracy as well as contemporary democracies. Employing a range of humanistic approaches, Joel draws on philosophical, historical, and literary sources to open new ways of theorizing contemporary political phenomena such as race, neoliberalism, critique, hope, inquiry, and fantasy.

Earthborn Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2024), Joel’s new book (co-written with Ali Aslam and David W. McIvor) offers a new vision of ecological and participatory democratic life for a time of crisis. Identifying myth and ritual as key resources for contemporary politics, Earthborn Democracy excavates practices and narratives that illustrate the interdependence necessary to inspire ecological renewal. . It tells stories of multispecies agency and egalitarian political organization across history, from ancient Mesopotamia and the precolonial Americas to contemporary social movements, emphasizing Indigenous traditions and resistance. Resonating across these practices and stories past and present is a belief that we are all—human as well as nonhuman—earthborn, and this can serve as the basis for reimagining democracy. Allying visionary political theory with environmental activism, Earthborn Democracy provides a foundation and a guide for collective action in pursuit of earthly flourishing

Joel has published two previous books. Herodotus in the Anthropocene (University of Chicago Press, 2020) develops a vision of earthly flourishing that can inspire and inform action in the twenty-first century. Herodotus in the Anthropocene develops a vision of earthly flourishing meant to inspire and inform action in the twenty-first century. Joel argues that Herodotus’s Histories offer a cluster of concepts for articulating and understanding the dynamic nature of things in a complex world, how human beings develop cultural practices in responsive interaction with the non-human things that shape existence, and what political organizations might best sustain the communities of things produced through these practices. Earthly flourishing describes living well within an order not entirely of your own making; it suggests the ongoing work of responsive adaptation to circumstances, events, and the fluctuations of fate in an uncertain and often unkind world. A thinker of unparalleled openness and curiosity, Herodotus helps us to envision creative and collective responses to the urgent problems of the present. This ancient example disrupts the settled patterns and approaches that make situations like the current climate catastrophe seem impossible. Joel thus interprets Herodotus’s Histories to begin a fruitful dialogue that can inspire other approaches to the contemporary impasse. 

Joel's first book, What Would Socrates Do? (Cambridge, 2014), reconstructs Socrates’ philosophy as a practice in ancient Athens to show how it appropriated and transformed democratic practices in ways that challenged extant democratic norms and ideology toward more flourishing. Importantly, however, this challenge was not anti-democratic (as Socrates’ Athenian critics wrongly surmised) but promised to empower citizens and non-citizens alike in Athenian democracy – if they could undertake philosophy together. What Would Socrates Do? also brings this reconstructed Socrates to 21st century practices inspired by Socrates’ philosophy. Examining the Socrates Cafés founded by Chris Phillips – philosophy clubs that now number in the hundreds around the world, dedicated to Socrates-inspired collective inquiry – as well as Earl Shorris’s Clemente Courses in the Humanities – humanities courses for ordinary people that have taken place internationally and pursue a collaborative Socratic inquiry – Joel shows how the reconstructed Socrates might contribute to these projects while the projects could also, in turn, challenge notions in the academy that Socrates belongs to liberal arts education or the vaunted Socratic method. Socrates speaks to the present moment not by being relevant but by the abiding strangeness (atopia) of his insistent questioning of the ethical basis of democratic life.

Joel's current research examines what he call the Deep Springs Model, an approach to educating leaders that integrates labor, academics, and self-governance; this research draws on nearly fifteen years of working with this model as a professor, mentor, and consultant at Deep Springs College as well as educational programs inspired by Deep Springs including Gull Island Institute, Outer Coast, and Tidelines Institute. It has also emerged from reflecting on self-governance with students at Bryn Mawr, which claims the oldest self-governance association in the United States. At Bryn Mawr, Joel has taught seminars on self-governance with archival research into its varied histories.

Joel teaches courses in the history of political thought, democratic theory, power and politics, and contemporary political theory. In all his courses Joel seeks to integrate questions from contemporary politics with the history of political thought: Greek tragedy and the Hollywood Western; Hegel and contemporary identity politics; international relations and Herodotus. Joel has taught Susan Sontag after Aristophanes's Lysistrata, Charles Mills between Rousseau and Kant, and Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture alongside Judith Butler and Sophocles. Just as Joel seeks to engage present questions with historically sensitive work from the history of political thought with my research, Joel also strives to use his teaching to introduce students to alternative perspectives and vocabularies from this history to broaden and deepen how they consider the present.

Before coming to Bryn Mawr, Joel held the Julian Steward Chair in the Social Sciences at Deep Springs College from 2010 until 2014. He was also a visiting assistant professor and visiting instructor at Carleton College in 2008 and 2010. Joel completed his BA at Carleton College and his MA and PhD at Duke University while also pursuing advanced language instruction at the University of California, Berkeley and Aix-en-Provence, France.

You may find more information on Joel's research and teaching, including links to articles and course syllabi on his website: www.joelschlosser.com.