Her Place in Theory

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Jeta Mulaj, Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Toronto Metropolitan University, to discuss the work of Frigga Haug: Marxist feminist theorist, sociologist, and one of the most important thinkers of social reproduction and collective emancipation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Together, Mulaj and Marchant explore what makes Haug’s work so enduring and generative: her critique of capitalist social relations, her theory of women’s labor and social reproduction, and her insistence that emancipation must transform everyday life as much as economic structures. From questioning the relationship between victimhood and agency, to the “four-in-one perspective,” the conversation highlights Haug as a thinker who challenged both economistic Marxism and liberal feminism, urging instead a democratic, collective reimagining of work, care, education, and human flourishing under and beyond capitalism.Texts Referenced in the Episode:Selected Writings of Frigga Haug on Experience, Labour, and Critique - Edited by Jeta Mulaj and Alexandra ColligsThe “Four-in-One Perspective”: A Manifesto for aMore Just Life - Frigga Haug

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Sylvana Tomaselli, Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, and a leading scholar of the history of political thought to discuss the work of Mary Wollstonecraft: writer, philosopher, and a bold critic of the social and political conventions of her time.Together, Tomaselli and Marchant explore what makes Wollstonecraft’s work so striking and enduring: her arguments for women’s education, her critique of inequality and dependency, and her insistence that reason and virtue—not custom or hierarchy—should shape human life. From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to her reflections on revolution, the conversation highlights Wollstonecraft as a thinker who challenged the assumptions of her age and offered a powerful account of freedom, independence, and moral responsibility.Texts Referenced in the Episode:Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics - Sylvana TomaselliWollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Hints - Edited by Sylvana TomaselliA Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary WollstonecraftThe Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft - Mary Wollstonecraft edited by Janet ToddReflections on the Revolution in France - Edmund BurkeEmile or On Education - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Michael Dango, Associate Professor of English at Rice University, to discuss the work of Lauren Berlant: an interdisciplinary theorist of affect, intimacy, and political life, and one of the most original and influential thinkers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.Together, they trace Berlant’s intellectual arc, from their earlywork on national fantasy and citizenship to later writings on affect, precarity, and the ordinary, while reflecting on the attachments and everyday forms through which political life is lived. From The Anatomy of National Fantasy and The Queen of America Goes to Washington City to Cruel Optimism, the conversation highlights Berlant’s distinctive method and the enduring force of concepts that illuminate how what sustains us can also hold us in place.Texts Referenced in the Episode:The Queen of America Goes to Washington City - Lauren BerlantThe Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life - Lauren BerlantThe Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture - Lauren BerlantCruel Optimism - Lauren BerlantOn the Inconvenience of Other People - Lauren BerlantSex in Public - Lauren Berlant and Michael WarnerGenre Flailing - Lauren BerlantCrisis Style: The Aesthetics of Repair - Michael DangoMadonna's Erotica - Michael Dango

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Bernard Yack, Lerman-Neubauer Professor of Democracy and Political Science at Brandeis University, to discuss the work of Judith Shklar: political theorist, historian of ideas, and one of the most incisive liberal thinkers of the twentieth century.Together, Yack and Marchant explore what makes Shklar’s work so bracing and enduring: “the liberalism of fear,” her insistence that cruelty is the worst political evil, and her distinctive approach to injustice, hypocrisy, and exile. From Ordinary Vices to The Faces of Injustice, the conversation highlights Shklar as a thinker who challenged both complacent liberal optimism and abstract moralism, urging instead a vigilant, historically grounded defense of freedom against the ever-present dangers of cruelty and abuse of power.Texts Referenced in the Episode:Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community - Bernard YackThe Problems of a Political Animal - Bernard YackLiberalism without Illusions - Edited by Bernard YackLegalism - Judith ShklarThe Liberalism of Fear - Judith ShklarThe Faces of Injustice - Judith ShklarOrdinary Vices - Judith ShklarAfter Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith - Judith ShklarWho Needs a Theory of Justice? Judith Shklar and the Politics of Injustice - Robin Douglass

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Aurelian Craiutu, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, to discuss the work of Elinor Ostrom — Nobel Prize–winning political economist and one of the most original thinkers about governance in the late twentieth century.Together, Craiutu and Marchant explore what makes Ostrom’s work so enduring and provocative: her challenge to the conventional state-versus-market dichotomy, her theory of polycentric governance, and her insistence that ordinary citizens are capable of self-government. From Governing the Commons to the broader intellectual legacy of the Bloomington School, the episode highlights Ostrom as a thinker who redefined how we understand collective action, institutional diversity, and the fragile art of making democracy work.Texts Referenced in the Episode:Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires  - Aurelian CraiutuA Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748-1830 - Aurelian CraiutuFaces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes - Aurelian CraiutuWhy Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals - Aurelian CraiutuGoverning the Commons - Elinor OstromBeyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems (Nobel Prize Lecture) - Elinor OstromActual World, Possible Future - Short DocumentaryThe Tragedy of the Commons - Garrett Hardin

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Gina Schouten, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, to discuss the work of Marilyn Frye - feminist philosopher and one of the most influential thinkers on oppression in the late twentieth century.Together, Schouten and Marchant explore what makes Frye’s work so enduring and incisive: her account of oppression as a systematic and structural phenomenon, her attention to the everyday realities of gendered power, and her groundbreaking analysis of the politics of emotions, particularly anger and resentment. From The Politics of Reality to Frye’s reflections on responsibility, solidarity, and feminist consciousness, the episode highlights Frye as a thinker whose ideas continue to shape how we understand power, emotion, and resistance in contemporary political life.Texts Referenced in the Episode:The Anatomy of Justice: On the Shape, Substance, and Power of Liberal Egalitarianism - Gina SchoutenLiberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor - Gina SchoutenThe Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory - Marilyn FryeThe Uses of Anger - Audre LordeThe Aptness of Anger - Amia Srinivasan

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Kristin Gjesdal, Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, to discuss the life and thought of Clara Zetkin - Marxist theorist, communist activist, and one of the founders of the Social Democratic Women’s Movement in Germany.Together, Gjesdal and Marchant examine what makes Zetkin’s work so distinctive and urgent: her commitment to women’s liberation as inseparable from class struggle, her attention to the lived realities of women workers, and her powerful analysis of fascism as a mass political movement. From socialist feminism and International Women’s Day to anti-fascism, racism, and political steadfastness in dark times, the episode highlights Zetkin as an unruly thinker whose ideas continue to challenge and illuminate contemporary political life.Texts Referenced in the Episode:Opprørerne: Kvinner som endret filosofien - Kristin GjesdalRebellinnen der Philosophie - Kristin GjesdalThe Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition - Dalia Nassar and Kristin GjesdalWomen Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition - Dalia Nassar and Kristin Gjesdal

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Joshua Cherniss, Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, to discuss the political thought of Nancy Rosenblum, the Harvard University Senator Joseph Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government emerita. The conversation weaves together Cherniss’s intellectual journey with an account of Rosenblum’s influence as a teacher and mentor, and how her work shaped his approach to political ethics and liberal theory.Together, Cherniss and Marchant explore what makes Rosenblum’s work so influential: her focus on the personal experience of liberalism, her attention to motivationand everyday moral life, and her insistence on grounding political theory in psychological and sociological realism. From pluralism and shifting involvements to neighborly relations and the democracy of everyday life, the episode highlights a vision of liberalism that is lived, complex, and deeply human.Texts Referenced in the Episode:Another Liberalism: Romanticism and the Reconstruction of Liberal Thought - Nancy L. RosenblumGood Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America - Nancy L. RosenblumLiberalism and the Moral Life - Edited by Nancy L. RosenblumLiberalism without Illusions: Essays on Liberal Theory and the Political Vision of Judith N. Shklar - Edited by Bernard YackA Mind and Its Time: The Development of Isaiah Berlin's Political Thought - Joshua L. ChernissLiberalism in Dark Times: The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century - Joshua L. Cherniss

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Duncan Ivison—Professor of Political Philosophy and President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester—to talk about the formidable Martha Nussbaum: philosopher, public intellectual, and one of the key architects of the capabilities approach.Whether she’s breathing new life into questions first posed by the ancients, advancing a passionate defence of liberal education, or offering rich reflections on the politics of emotion, Nussbaum has achieved an extraordinary amount in her career so far. This episode provides an energising and insightful look at why her ideas continue to challenge, inspire and provoke contemporary academic and popular audiences today.Texts Referenced in the Episode:The Fragility of Goodness - Martha NussbaumTragedy and Justice: Bernard Williams Remembered - Martha NussbaumWomen and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach - Martha NussbaumCultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education - Martha NussbaumPostcolonial Liberalism - Duncan IvisonPolitical Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples - Edited by Duncan Ivison, Paul Patton and Will Sanders

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Lydia Moland, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Philosophy at Colby College, to uncover the extraordinary—and often forgotten—story of Helene Stöcker, a trailblazer of early 20th-century feminism. Stöcker championed sexual reform, reproductive freedom, and radical pacifism, and pushed for a “new ethic” she believed could reshape society from the inside out. Moland walks us through Stöcker’s bold readings of Nietzsche, her fight for gender equality and social justice, and her fierce resistance to rising nationalism and militarism before World War II. It’s a conversation about a visionary thinker whose ideas feel strikingly urgent today.Texts Referenced in the episode:Lydia Maria Child : A Radical American Life - Lydia MolandThe Oxford Handbook of American and British Women Philosophers in the Nineteenth Century - Edited by Lydia Moland and Alison StoneThe Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition - Edited by Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar

In this episode of Her Place in Theory, Juliette Marchant is joined by Shterna Friedman, Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard University, for a conversation about the life and legacy of Hanna Pitkin.They explore Pitkin’s transformative account of political representation, her nuanced and sometimes puzzling engagement with Hannah Arendt’s idea of the social, and the enduring significance of her approach to political theory. Shterna also reflects on her time as Pitkin’s research assistant, offering thoughtful insights into what Pitkin taught her about pedagogy, mentorship, and the act of thinking itself.Texts Referenced in the Episode:The Concept of Representation - Hanna PitkinThe Attack of the Blob - Hanna Piktin

In this episode of Her Place in Theory, Juliette Marchant is joined by Helena Rosenblatt, Distinguished Professor of History, French, Political Science, Biography and Memoir at the CUNY Graduate Center, to discuss the life and legacy of Germaine de Staël.Together, they explore de Staël’s role in shaping modern liberalism, her navigation of the tumultuous politics of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and the intellectual networks that made her a force across Europe. What can de Staël’s ideas about freedom, emotion, and conversation teach us about politics, and about the life of the mind, today?Texts Referenced in the Episode:The Lost History of Liberalism – Helena RosenblattConsiderations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution - Germaine de Staël

Welcome to Her Place in Theory, a podcast that celebrates ideas and the women that shaped them. In this short preview, host, Juliette Marchant, introduces the concept behind the series, what inspired it, and what listeners can expect in the episodes to come.New episodes will be released every other Tuesday, so subscribe to stay up to date with the stories and ideas of the women who continue to shape the way we think.