Roxanne L. Euben is the Jane Bishop '51 Associate Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University in Politics and Near Eastern Studies (1995) and a B.A. from Wesleyan University, where she graduated with honors in philosophy.
Before joining the Wellesley College faculty in 1997, Professor Euben was an assistant professor in the Department of Government and International Studies at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and worked as a journalist in western Massachusetts. At Wellesley, she regularly teaches a range of courses in political theory, feminist theory and Islamic political thought.
Professor Euben’s teaching and research focus on the intersection of Western and non-Western political theory--a newly emerging field called comparative political theory--with a specific focus on Islamic and EuroAmerican political thought. She has lectured extensively on Islamic fundamentalism and Muslim political thought since the events of September 11, 2001, and is the author of the book, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism (Princeton University Press, 1999), and several publications on comparative political theory, most recently “Traveling Theorists and Translating Practices,” in What is Political Theory?, ed. Stephen K. White and J. Donald Moon, (Sage Publications, 2004); "A Counternarrative of Shared Ambivalence: Some Muslim and Western Perspectives on Science and Reason,” (Common Knowledge, 2003); and “Killing (for) Politics: Jihad, Martyrdom and Political Action,” (Political Theory 2002).
Her most recent book, written at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge (Princeton University Press, 2006). While Western travel is associated with a pioneering spirit of discovery, the dominant image of Muslim mobility is the jihadi who travels not to learn but to destroy. The book challenges those stereotypes by charting the common ways in which Muslim and Western travelers negotiate the dislocation of travel, which signifies not only a physical movement, but also an imaginative journey in which wonder about those who live differently makes it possible to see the world in a new way.
She has previously been awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies as well as prizes for excellence in teaching, including the Pinanski Prize in 2003.
Profile last updated: 11/06