Roxanne L. Euben is a political theorist whose research has helped pioneer a new area of inquiry often referred to as “comparative political theory.” This is an understanding of political theory not as coextensive with Euro-American canonical texts ‘from Plato to NATO,’ but rather as inclusive of intellectual traditions and practices of the “non-West” and global South, as well as of indigenous traditions in, but not of, “the West.” Euben’s special area of expertise and research is Muslim and Euro-American political thought, and her scholarship has addressed such topics as Muslim cosmopolitanism; jihad; martyrdom and political action; travel and translation; gender and humiliation; shared perspectives on science and reason; the politics of visual and verbal rhetorics; and digital time. She is the author of Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism (Princeton, 1999), Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge, (Princeton, 2006), and Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from Al-Banna to Bin Laden (Princeton, 2009), written and edited in collaboration with Muhammad Qasim Zaman. She has been published across a wide spectrum of scholarly journals, including Perspectives on Politics, Political Theory, The Review of Politics, The Journal of Politics, International Studies Review, and Political Psychology. Euben's honors include fellowships from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation (2016-17), the National Endowment for the Humanities (2012-13), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2004-5), the American Council of Learned Societies (2000-1) and the Mellon Foundation (2002), and her work was awarded the Frank L. Wilson Best American Political Science Association Paper Prize (2005). She taught previously at Wellesley College, where she was the Ralph Emerson and Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of Political Science, and began her teaching career at the University of South Carolina, Columbia in 1995, the year she received a Ph.D. in Politics and Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. Euben has been the recipient of two teaching, the Pinanski Teaching Prize, Wellesley College (2003), and the Excellence in Teaching Award, University of South Carolina (1996).
Muslim and Arab political thought
Euro-American political and social thought
Comparative Political Theory (and the politics of comparisons)
Islamist political thought
Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from Al-Banna to Bin Laden, with Muhammad Qasim Zaman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
“Spectacles of Sovereignty: ISIS Executions, Visual Rhetoric, and Sovereign Power.” 2017. Perspectives on Politics 15(4): 1007-1033.
“Humiliation and the Political Mobilization of Masculinity.” Political Theory 43(4), 2015: 500-532.
“Traveling Theorists and Translating Practices.” In What is Political Theory?, ed. Stephen K. White and J. Donald Moon, pp. 145-173. London, UK: Sage Publications, 2004.
“A Counternarrative of Shared Ambivalence: Some Muslim and Western Perspectives on Science and Reason.” Common Knowledge 9 (1), 2003:50-77. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
“Killing (for) Politics: Jihad, Martyrdom and Political Action.” Political Theory 30 (1), February 2002: 4-35. London, UK: Sage Publications.
Premodern, Antimodern, or Postmodern?: Islamic and Western Critiques of Modernity.” The Review of Politics 59 (1997): 429-59. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.