Kadish Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory: Sophie Smith, University of Oxford

Okin and Rawls, Feminism and Liberalism, History and Philosophy

Abstract 

About Sophie Smith, University of Oxford:

Sophie Smith is an Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow at University College. She is also an Executive Editor at the Journal of the History of Ideas.

In 2016-2017 she was also the Quentin Skinner Fellow at CRASSH at the University of Cambridge.

She completed her PhD in the History of Political Thought at the University of Cambridge (Trinity College) under the supervision of Annabel Brett, after an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History and a BA in History, both also from the University of Cambridge. Her PhD thesis won the 2015 Prince Consort Prize and Seeley Medal for best dissertation from the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge. After this she was a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, University of Oxford.

She is primarily a historian of political thought. Her two main areas of research are early modern political ideas and twentieth century intellectual history, especially the history of feminist politics and political theory.

In early modernity, she has written on the history of European ideas of democracy, empire and the state, of citizenship and slavery, and on arguments about the nature and purpose of political philosophy itself. She is especially interested in the relationship between philosophy, politics and imaginative literature in this period, the early modern reception of Aristotle’s Politics and the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. She is currently editing The Cambridge History of Democracy: 1200-1800.

Her interest in the project and politics of political theory extends to her work on feminism. One focus of her research, much of which involves unpublished archival material, is on the ways that feminist authors across the twentieth century theorised in response to questions that are still with us: about work and social reproduction, coalition and collective action. She is also interested in the intersections between activist and academic approaches to feminist theory, about feminist engagements with so-called ‘mainstream’ political theory and about what these histories suggest for the future of feminist inquiry.

Finally, she is interested in the history of historiography, that is, in the history of historical writing. Here she is particularly concerned with the ways that contemporary intellectual historians and political theorists writing about the past reproduce (wittingly or otherwise) the occlusions of their predecessors, and she is also interested in thinking about the non-obvious reasons why this might matter.  She has written in this regard about the historiographies of 20th century political philosophy and political theory and of women’s intellectual history.

About the workshop:

A workshop for presenting and discussing work in progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The central aim is to provide an opportunity for students to engage with philosophers, political theorists, and legal scholars working on normative questions. Another aim is to bring together people from different disciplines who have strong normative interests or who speak to issues of potential interest to philosophers and political theorists.

The theme for Spring 2025 is “Critics of Liberalism,” and we will host scholars working in Philosophy, Law, History, and Political Science. Our underlying concern will be the normative critiques of substantive liberal ideas from both the left and right, as well as staunch defenders of liberalism.

This semester the workshop is co-taught by Joshua Cohen and Desmond Jagmohan.