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Megan Gallagher, Ph.D.

megan.gallagher@ua.edu


Assistant Professor

The University of Alabama

Year of PhD: 2014

Country: United States (Alabama)

About Me:

I am a political theorist and an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama, where I am also affiliated with the Department of Political Science. I primarily teach courses on feminist political theory and race and gender in the history of political thought. My areas of research include sex and gender in the history of political thought (especially in the 17th and 18th centuries), contemporary feminist political theory, and politics and literature. I also have a longstanding interest in the political thought of the French Enlightenment. 

In 2018-2019, I was a lecturer in the American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Master of Liberal Arts and Science Programs at Vanderbilt University. I was previously a visiting assistant professor with the Vanderbilt Department of Political Science and the Whitman College Department of Politics, as well as a lecturer in the UCLA Department of Political Science. I have held the Carol G. Lederer Postdoctoral Fellowship in Gender Studies at Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and the Clark Dissertation Fellowship at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles. I received my PhD in from the UCLA Department of Political Science in 2014.

Research Interests

Political Theory

Race, Ethnicity and Politics

Critical Race Theory

Democratic Theory

Early Modern/Enlightenment

Emotions And Politics

Feminist Political Theory

Feminist Theory

History Of Empire

History Of Feminisms

Politics And Literature

Race Class Gender

My Research:

 I am a political theorist and an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama, where I am also affiliated with the Department of Political Science. I primarily teach courses on historical and contemporary feminist political theory. My areas of research include sex and gender in the history of political thought (especially in the 17th and 18th centuries), contemporary feminist political theory, and politics and literature. I also have a longstanding interest in the political thought of the French Enlightenment. 

In 2018-2019, I was a lecturer in the American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Master of Liberal Arts and Science Programs at Vanderbilt University. I was previously a visiting assistant professor with the Vanderbilt Department of Political Science and the Whitman College Department of Politics, as well as a lecturer in the UCLA Department of Political Science. I have held the Carol G. Lederer Postdoctoral Fellowship in Gender Studies at Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and the Clark Dissertation Fellowship at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles. I received my PhD in from the UCLA Department of Political Science in 2014.

Publications:

Journal Articles:

(2016) Moving Hearts: Cultivating Patriotic Affect in Rousseau’s Considerations on the Government of Poland,, Law, Culture and the Humanities

Rousseau’s embrace of ceremony and festivals in his 'Considerations on the Government of Poland' demonstrates one way for republican political thought to develop a substantive treatment of civic virtue. Differentiating the narcissism of spectacle and theater that Rousseau critiques in the 'Letter to d’Alembert' from the 'Considerations'’ call for a generous affect, I demonstrate that the latter is compatible with a republican ethos premised on civic virtue and patriotic attachment to the nation-state. Rousseau argues for the instantiation of political practices that constantly cultivate political virtue and their associated affective orientations. His treatment of civic ceremonies in the 'Considerations' should be read as an attempt to inculcate patriotic affect in republican citizens via constitutional measures

(2016) Fear, Liberty, and Honourable Death in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, Eighteenth-Century Fiction

I read Montesquieu’s 'Persian Letters' as an attempt to theorize a liberated alternative to despotic rule. As Montesquieu argues in 'The Spirit of the Laws,' fear—specifically fear of the ruler’s emotional and material excesses—dominates the life of the despotic subject. Although in the 'Letters' the seraglio is the despotic state’s parallel, the seraglio is the site of overflowing and barely governed passions. Montesquieu’s solution to the excesses of the seraglio is not the eradication of emotion; rather, he offers a template for transforming negative passion—fear—into courage, a prelude to a potentially liberating experience. This transformation is portrayed most clearly in the character of Roxane, the rebellious wife whose courageous actions precipitate the collapse of the seraglio. I argue that Roxane’s insurrection and suicide evoke a model established by the Roman matriarch Lucretia. Though not traditional political actors themselves, both Lucretia and Roxane anticipate the possibility of a personal and political liberation through their refusal of fear-based, despotic politics in favour of alternative emotional regimes based in courage.