Joel Olson's homepage

Joel Olson, Associate Professor
Department of Politics & International Affairs
Northern Arizona University
PO Box 15036
Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5036
(928) 523-8514

Teaching.

I teach courses on political theory at the undergraduate and graduate level, including ancient, modern, and contemporary theory, American political thought, political ideologies, democratic theory, critical race theory, extremism, and Marxist theory.

Fall 2011 courses
Click on a course to download its syllabus

POS 351 Classical & Medieval Political Thought

POS 606 Critical Race Theory

 

Spring 2012 courses
Click on a course to download its syllabus

Teaching at the University of Alicante, Spain:

Extremism and the West

Contemporary Western Political Thought

 

Other courses I teach
Click on a course to download a previous syllabus for that class

POS 230 Extremism

POS 254 Political Ideologies

POS 352 Modern Political Thought

POS 353 Contemporary Political Thought

POS 358 Critical Race Theory

POS 450 American Political Thought

POS 453 Marxist Theory

POS 607 Political Theory

 

Research

I have two research agendas. The first focuses on the relationship between race and democracy in the United States, including areas such as whiteness, abolitionism, privilege, citizenship, participation, and the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois. The second is concerned with the role of fanaticism (or extremism) in American politics and political thought. I am currently writing a book on the political theory of fanaticism in the United States, tentatively titled, American Zealot, focusing on the abolitionists, the anti-abortion movement, the radical environmentalist movement, the Black Power movement, and Al Qaeda.

Books

• The Abolition of White Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004).
• In progress: American Zealot: Fanaticism and Democracy in the United States
  

Journal articles
(If you would like a PDF of any of these articles and there is no link here, please email me and I'm happy to send you one.)

• "To Live, Love and Work Anywhere You Please: Arizona and the Struggle for Locomotion" (with Luis Fernandez), Contemporary Political Theory 10, no. 3 (2011): 412-419.

• “The Politics of Protestant Violence: Abolitionists and Anti-Abortionists,” in The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence, ed. Andrew R. Murphy (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011): 485-497.

• “Slavery in the United States,” The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Theory Volume 3, ed. Mark Bevir (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2010), 1269-1274.
  
• "The Problem with Infoshops and Insurrection: U.S. Anarchism, Movement Building, and the Racial Order," Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the Academy, ed. Randall Amster, Luis Fernandez, et al. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 35-45.

• “Friends and Enemies, Slaves and Masters: Wendell Phillips, Fanaticism, and the Limits of Democratic Theory,” Journal of Politics 71, no. 1 (January 2009): 1-14. An abridged version of this article also appears as chap. 8 in Adrian Little and Moya Lloyd, eds., The Politics of Radical Democracy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).
  
• “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Race Concept,” Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity (Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 214-230. (This article originally appeared in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 7, no. 3-4 (Summer/Fall 2005): 118-128.)
  
• “Whiteness and the Polarization of American Politics,” Political Research Quarterly 61, no. 4 (December 2008): 704-718.
  
• "The Freshness of Fanaticism: The Abolitionist Defense of Zealotry," Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 4 (December 2007): 685-701.
  
• “Whiteness and the Participation-Inclusion Dilemma,” Political Theory 30, no. 3 (June 2002): 384-409.
  
• “The Democratic Problem of the White Citizen,” Constellations 8, no. 2 (June 2001): 163-183.
  
• “The Limits of Colorblind and Multicultural Personhood,” Stanford Agora: An Online Journal of Legal Perspectives 2, no. 1 (Fall 2000): http://www.law.stanford.edu/agora/issue2.
  
• “The Revolutionary Spirit: Hannah Arendt and the Anarchists of the Spanish Civil War,” Polity 29, no. 4 (Summer 1997): 461-488.
  

Selected book reviews
(If you would like a copy of any of these reviews, please email me.)

• Review of Anarchism in America, Directed by Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher (San Francisco: AK Press Video 2006), New Political Science 29, no. 2 (June 2007): 290-93.
  
• “Political Theory and the Racial Order,” review essay, Polity 36, no. 3 (April 2004): 529-541.
  
• “Citizens, Bodies, and the Redemption of American Political Thought,” review of The Body Politic, by Catherine Holland, Theory & Event 7, no. 3 (2004).
  
• “Reconstructing the Big Apple,” review of Second Founding: New York City, Reconstruction, and the Making of American Democracy, by David Quigley, Civil War Book Review (Fall 2004), http://www.cwbr.com.

Unpublished papers

• "Plurality, Party,Politics"
• "Bloodguilt of a Nation: John Brown, Operation Rescue, and the Fanatical Approach to Politics," conference paper
  

Other writings, public talks, and interviews

I've done a few articles, interviews, and public talks on fanaticism, Arizona's notorious anti-immigrant law SB 1070, and a few other topics. Below are links to some of them.

• "Whiteness and the 99%" pamphlet, October 2011
• "New Punk Manifesto" (1991), reprinted in White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race, ed. Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremblay (New York: Verso 2011).
• "Arizona's Two Futures: Youth Movements Confront Legislated Intolerance," New.Clear.Vision March 21, 2011
• Interview on Northern Arizona News about the Repeal Coalition, March 3, 2011
• "Corruption and Class Struggle: What It's Like to Live in Arizona Right Now," Counterpunch January 13, 2011
• Interview on Arizona's politics on"Beneath the Surface with Suzi Weissman," KPFK FM, Los Angeles, Jan. 14, 2011 (mp3)
• "Extremism and American Politics: Abolitionists, Jihadis, and Tea Parties," video of talk in Sedona, Arizona, December 16, 2010
• "SB 1070 and the Racial Order," video of talk at Bluestockings Bookstore, NYC, August 3, 2010
• "Miracles, Democracy, and the Fight Against SB 1070," Imagine 2050 July 13, 2010
• "Nativism and Fascism," Imagine 2050 June 14, 2010
• Interview with Ashley Smith of SocialistWorker.org, May 28, 2010
• "Radically Democratic Extremism: Interview with Charles of AK Press," May 26, 2010
• "SB 1070: Battle at the Grassroots," May 14, 2010
• "New Arizona," April 30, 2010 / "La Nueva Arizona"
• "American Radicalism," Imagine 2050 January 14, 2010
• "Extremism and American Political Thought," Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, December 4, 2009
• Talk on fanaticism and radical politics, Beer and Revolution lecture series, Tempe, Arizona, August 15, 2009
• "The Politics of Protestant Violence: Abolitionists and Anti-Abortionists," Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, April 10, 2009.