Joshua Foa Dienstag

Who is Joshua Foa Dienstag?

Joshua Foa Dienstag is a of Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law at the UCLA Department of Political Science. Joshua Foa Dienstag's work focuses on the intersection of politics with time, history, memory and narrative. Originally from New York City, he received his doctorate from Princeton University and taught at the University of Virginia for 13 years before moving to UCLA. His research focuses largely on European political theory between the 17th and 19th centuries but he has also written about the American Founding, Don Quixote and Wittgenstein. His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Polity, Political Theory, Journal of Politics, History & Memory and New Literary History among other places. He has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Center on Constitutional Government at Harvard University. His first book, Dancing in Chains: Narrative and Memory in Political Theory (Stanford U.P., 1997), pursued the narrative structures embedded in the major texts of political theory. His second book Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton U.P., 2006) established the existence of a tradition of pessimistic political theory focused on the burdens that a time-bound existence imposes on life and politics. Professor Dienstag teaches classes in modern, continental and contemporary political theory as well as more specialized classes on individual thinkers or topics. In the near future, he hopes to offer classes on political theory and film as well as the nature of money.