Nancy Luxon joined the faculty at Minnesota after two years at the University of Chicago’s Society of Fellows. Her work in contemporary political and social theory concentrates on questions of power, authority, and truth-telling. Other interests include: psychoanalysis (theory and clinical practice); French and postcolonial political thought; theories of subjection and resistance; the adaptation of literary theories of narrative for politics; and the intersection of ethics and politics. She is also the founder and director of the Institute for Critical Inquiry into Global Change (located under the aegis of ICGC at Minnesota). The Institute seeks to develop critical research around questions of imperialism and colonialism.

Educational Background

  • Ph.D: Political Science; University of California, San Diego

  • B.A.: International Relations, with honors; Stanford University

Courses Taught

  • Introduction to Political Theory

  • French Politics and Protest

  • Contemporary Political Theory

  • Revolution, Democracy, Empire

  • Graduate: Language and Politics

  • Graduate: Practices of the Self

  • Graduate: Modernity and its Discontents

  • Graduate: French Marxisms and Postcolonial Theory

Awards

  • Talle Faculty Research Award (for Staging the Political: Colonial Encounters in North Africa and France), 2017 - 2019

  • Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “The Politics of Land,” 2017 - 2018

  • University of Minnesota Imagine Fund Award: Négritude and Radical Politics, 2017

  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Enduring Questions Grant, 2016-2018

  • University of Minnesota Imagine Fund Award: Archives of Infamy, 2016

  • IAS Residential Fellowship, University of Minnesota, Fall 2009

  • Harper-Schmidt Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Chicago, September 2005 - June 2007