Nederman, Cary J. 1957- (Cary Joseph Nederman)

views updated

Nederman, Cary J. 1957- (Cary Joseph Nederman)

PERSONAL:

Born May 6, 1957, in Pittsburgh, PA; son of Harold Joseph and Rena Nederman; married Donnalee Dox. Education: Columbia University, B.A., 1978; York University, M.A., 1979, Ph.D., 1983.

ADDRESSES:

Home—College Station, TX. Office—Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University, 2010 Allen Bldg., College Station, TX 77843-4348. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Glendon College, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, instructor, 1980-84; University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, visiting assistant professor and Mactaggart research fellow, 1984-86; University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, lecturer, 1986-91; Siena College, Loudonville, NY, visiting associate professor, 1991-92; University of Arizona, Tucson, assistant professor, 1992-95, associate professor of political science, 1995-2000; Texas A&M University, College Station, professor of political science, 2000—, and director of graduate studies, 2002-05. Visiting fellow, Center for Advanced Study of the International Institute, University of Michigan, 1997; research affiliate, Center for the History of European Discourses, University of Queensland, 2003.

MEMBER:

International Society for the Study of European Ideas, Society for the Study of Medieval Political Thought (cofounder), Conference for the Study of Political Thought, Renaissance Society of America, Medieval Academy of America, American Political Science Association, Texas Medieval Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

David Truman Award, Columbia College of Columbia University, 1978; York University fellowship, 1978-79; Ontario graduate fellowship, 1980-83; distinguished service award, 1995, outstanding teacher award, 1996, and outstanding advisor award, 1998, all University of Arizona; teaching fellow, St. Catharine's College, 1997; honorary fellow, Siena College, 1999; faculty fellowship, 2001-02, and globalization and diversity curriculum development grant, 2002, both Texas A&M University; Fulbright Alumni Initiative Award, 2004-05, and Fulbright Senior Specialist grant, 2006-10, both Council for International Educational Exchange.

WRITINGS:

(Editor and translator) John of Salisbury, Policraticus: Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor) Marsiglio of Padua, Writings on the Empire: Defensor Minor and De translatione Imperii, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor, with Kate Langdon Forhan) Medieval Political Theory: A Reader: The Quest for the Body Politic, 1100-1400, Routledge (New York, NY), 1993, published as Readings in Medieval Political Theory: 1100-1400, Hackett Publishing (Cambridge, MA), 2000.

Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua's "Defensor pacis," Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1995.

(Editor, with John Christian Laursen, and contributor) Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1996.

Medieval Aristotelianism and Its Limits: Classical Traditions in Moral and Political Philosophy, Twelfth-Fifteenth Centuries, Variorum (Brookfield, VT), 1997.

(Editor, with John Christian Laursen, and contributor) Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1998.

Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100-c. 1550, Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, PA), 2000.

(Editor and translator, with Thomas M. Izbicki) Three Tracts on Empire: Engelbert of Admont, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, and Juan de Torquemada, Thoemmes Press (Bristol, England), 2000.

(Editor and translator) Political Thought in Early Fourteenth-Century England: Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Tempe, AZ), 2002.

(Editor, with Constant J. Mews and Rodney M. Thomson) Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100-1540: Essays in Honour of John O. Ward, Brepols (Turnhout, Belgium), 2003.

(Editor, with Georgiana Donavin and Richard Utz) Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Medieval Sermon, Brepols (Turnhout, Belgium), 2004.

(Editor, with Benedetto Fontana and Gary Remer, and contributor) Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy, Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, PA), 2004.

(Editor, with Ian Hunter and John Christian Laursen, and contributor) Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2005.

John of Salisbury, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renissance Studies (Tempe, AZ), 2006.

Author of afterword and bibliography for Defensor pacis, translated by Alan Gewirth, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2001. Associate editor of New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Scribner (New York, NY), 2004. Contributor to books, including A Medieval Reader, edited by Norman Cantor, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994; and From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought, edited by Oliver O'Donovan and Joan L. O'Donovan, Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), 1999. Contributor to periodicals, including American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Political Theory, Journal of the History of Ideas, History of Political Thought, and Speculum. Editorial assistant, Political Theory, 1976-78; book review editor, Political Science, 1987-1988; member of editorial board of Political Research Quarterly, 1996-2000 and 2000-2006; consulting editor, History of Political Thought, 1998—; member of editorial advisory committee, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000—; series editor, "Disputatio" book series, 2001—; member of board of editors, Journal of the History of Ideas, 2004—; member of editorial advisory board, "Cursus Mundi" book series, 2006—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Cary J. Nederman is a university professor who specializes in the history of Western political thought, with an emphasis on Greek, Roman, and early European ideas. In Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, a collection of eleven essays, Nederman and coeditor John Christian Laursen "locate discussions of tolerance in contexts beyond the Enlightenment, in a critique of Western liberalism which stresses the alternative values of functionalist models of toleration," observed Diarmaid MacCulloch in the English Historical Review. "The idea of toleration (of difference in religious lifestyles as well as in ethnic culture, general definition, or sexual orientation) has become a major theme of political theory research in the 1980s and 1990s," Maryanne Cline Horowitz noted in the American Political Science Review. The critic added, "The overall contribution of Difference and Dissent is to recognize communitarian and natural law foundations of toleration theory and to encourage us to ask precisely whom a theorist is tolerating, whether s/he intends temporary concordance or permanent toleration, and to whom the theorist is not extending toleration."

In a companion volume, Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment, Nederman and Laursen "propose that tolerance is good and that its roots were variegated, pre-dating John Locke," wrote Renaissance Quarterly reviewer Marcia L. Colish. "They treat figures and themes ranging from France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England to colonial America, from the twelfth to the early eighteenth centuries." According to Horowitz, the volume "encourages contingent, local studies of toleration policies. The editors' introduction localizes and limits Locke and disputes the myths of relentless persecution in medieval and early modern times, of secularization encouraging toleration, of unilateral Christian intolerance of non-Christians." Writing in the English Historical Review, Alexandra Walsham commented that Beyond the Persecuting Society "remains an important contribution to reconceptualizing the relationship between persecution and toleration less in terms of a black and white polarity than an infinite range of shades of grey."

Medieval Aristotelianism and Its Limits: Classical Traditions in Moral and Political Philosophy, Twelfth-Fifteenth Centuries contains seventeen essays by Nederman concerning medieval political thought. In the work, Nederman pays particular attention to the influence of Aristole and Cicero on medieval writers, including philosopher John of Salisbury. "Nederman gives added support to the trend in modern interpretation that sees the twelfth century, especially, as providing a developing understanding of the naturalistic context into which Aristotelian ideas so neatly fitted as they were increasingly discovered through that century and the thirteenth," Joseph Canning remarked in the American Political Science Review.

Building on his earlier works with Laursen, in Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100-c. 1550, Nederman "argues that principled tolera- tion of other religious and ethnic groups, commonly believed to be a distinctly modern discourse, was, in fact, elaborated and defended by a variety of Christian writers in medieval and early modern Europe," Journal of Religion contributor N. Scott Johnson stated. Examining the writings of several medieval theorists, including Peter Abelard, John of Salisbury, Marsiglio of Padua, and Nicholas of Cusa, Nederman "skillfully articulates the various ways in which these thinkers encountered and thought about religious and cultural differences," Johnson noted. According to Gerald Christianson in Church History, the author "contends that the Middle Ages, far from having anything to contribute to our understanding of tolerance, stands over against our notions of an open society," and Journal of Ecclesiastical History reviewer James Muldoon similarly noted that Nederman "argues, … that medieval theories of toleration are relevant to the contemporary world." In the words of Francis M. Wilhoit, writing in Perspectives on Political Science, "there is no denying that the author is multifaceted, boldly assertive, and relentlessly curious—just as any true scholar should be."

Nederman served as coeditor on Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy, "a valuable compendium of studies of the relationship between rhetoric and democracy that suggests that these elements are mutually reliant," wrote Joseph P. Zompetti in Argumentation and Advocacy. The essays "draw upon pre-modern political thought in order to assess the idea of deliberative democracy," remarked Travis D. Smith in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Smith added, "Above all, the book demonstrates the wrongheadedness of imagining the possibility and supposing the desirability of liberating deliberation from rhetorical persuasion." According to Zompetti, Talking Democracy "is an important work for anyone interested in the political value of rhetoric, particularly its utility for democratic endeavors."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Political Science Review, September, 1998, Maryanne Cline Horowitz, review of Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe and Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment, p. 687; September, 1999, Joseph Canning, review of Medieval Aristotelianism and Its Limits: Classical Traditions in Moral and Political Philosophy, Twelfth-Fifteenth Centuries, p. 705.

Argumentation and Advocacy, fall, 2005, Joseph P. Zompetti, review of Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy, p. 120.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, July, 2005, Travis D. Smith, review of Talking Democracy.

Church History, September, 2002, Gerald Christianson, review of Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100-c. 1550, p. 651; December, 2006, Jacques Berlinerblau, review of Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, p. 899.

English Historical Review, April, 1999, Diarmaid MacCulloch, review of Difference and Dissent, p. 436; November, 1999, Alexandra Walsham, review of Beyond the Persecuting Society, p. 1308.

History Today, July, 1995, Douglas Galbraith, review of Medieval Political Theory: A Reader: The Quest for the Body Politic, 1100-1400, p. 59.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, July, 2002, James Muldoon, review of Worlds of Difference, p. 570.

Journal of Religion, October, 2002, N. Scott Johnson, review of Worlds of Difference, p. 637.

Perspectives on Political Science, spring, 2002, Francis M. Wilhoit, review of Worlds of Difference, p. 122.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2006, review of John of Salisbury.

Renaissance Quarterly, summer, 1999, Marcia L. Colish, review of Beyond the Persecuting Society, p. 538.

Review of Metaphysics, December, 1996, Richard J. Doughtery, review of Writings on the Empire: Defensor Minor and De translatione Imperii, p. 413.