Delightful Horror: Edmund Burke and the Aesthetics of Democratic Revolution

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., February 20, 2012 – Jason Frank, associate professor of government at Cornell University, will give a talk titled “Delightful Horror: Edmund Burke and the Aesthetics of Democratic Revolution” on Tuesday, Feb. 28, at 4 p.m. in Griffin Hall, room 3, at Williams College. The event is free and open to the public.
Frank’s primary field is political theory, and his research and teaching interests include democratic theory, American political thought, politics and literature, political culture, and the philosophy of political inquiry. He works on historically situated approaches to democratic theory, with an emphasis on early American political thought and culture.
His book, Constituent Moments: Enacting the People in Post-Revolutionary America, explores the legal and political dilemmas engendered by the American Revolution’s enthronement of “the people” as the legitimate ground of public authority. He is currently completing a new book on the Federalist Papers titled Publius and Political Imagination, editing A Political Companion to Herman Melville, and beginning a new research project on the aesthetic dimensions of political authority. He is the co-editor of Vocations of Political Theory and of a recent double issue of the journal Diacritics. Frank’s articles and reviews have appeared in such journals as Political Theory, Modern Intellectual History, Theory & Event, Public Culture, Constellations, Perspectives on Politics, The Review of Politics, and several anthologies.
Frank received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in political science from the Johns Hopkins University.
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