George Shulman
Professor Emeritus
gms1@nyu.edu
B.A., American Literature, Amherst College, 1973
Ph.D., political theory, Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 1982
George Shulman's interests lie in the fields of political thought and American studies. He teaches and writes on political thought in Europe and the United States, as well as on Greek and HebrewÑtragic and biblicalÑtraditions. His teaching and writing emphasize the role of narrative in culture and politics. Professor Shulman is a recipient of the 2003 NYU Distinguished Teaching Award. He is the author of Radicalism and Reverence: Gerrard Winstanley and the English Revolution (University of California Press, 1989) and American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), which won the David Easton Prize in political theory. Focusing on the language that great American critics have used to engage the racial domination at the center of American history, American Prophecy explores the relationship of prophecy and race to American nationalism and democratic politics. Professor Shulman edited Radical Future Pasts, which was released by The University Press of Kentucky in July 2014.
Edited Volumes
2014
Radical Future Pasts: Untimely Political Theory, edited by George M. Shulman, Romand Coles, and Mark Reinhardt was published by University Press of Kentucky.
Books
2008
George M. Shulman's American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture was published by University of Minnesota Press.
Teaching and Research Interests
history of European and American social thought including relevant literary works; American studies; contemporary political psychoanalytic and feminist theory; the Bible in Western politics and thought
Recent News
AWARDS AND HONORS
Professor George Shulman was named a 2016-2017 Faculty Fellow at NYU's Center for the Humanities. Shulman will work on his project, Postmortem Effects: Theorizing (Beyond) Impasse.
Professor Shulman convened the 2016 NYU Gallatin Global Faculty Symposium, “Human Migration and Nationalist Anxiety,” in Prague in March 2016. Shulman, Vasuki Nesiah, and Ritty Lukose each served as a moderator for one of the conference sessions.
CONFERENCES AND TALKS
In October 2018, Professor Shulman delivered "The Undercommons as Anti-Politics" at the Association for Political Theory Annual Meeting, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
In November 2018, Professor Shulman delivered the Politics in the Humanities (PITH) Lecture at Brown University’s Cogut Institute: "Fred Moten's Refusals and Consents: Maternity, Natality, and the Politics of Fugitivity" in Providence, Rhode Island.
Also in November 2018, Professor Shulman delivered "Fugitivity and Politics in the Work of Fred Moten" at the American Studies Association Annual Meeting, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Professor Shulman gave talks on his book project, Postmortem Effects: Theorizing (Beyond) Impasse, in March 2017 at Williams College, in April 2017 at the Western Political Science Association conference in Vancouver, and at Science Po and Paris VII in May 2017.
PUBLICATIONS
George Shulman is co-author, with Alyson Cole, of Derangement and Liberalism: the Political Theory of Michael Rogin, which was published by Routeledge in 2018.
George Shulman's "A Tocqueville for Our Time" appeared in Volume 36 Number 2 of Raritan.
Shulman co-authored, with Lewis R. Gordon, Annie Menzel, and Jasmine Syedullah, "Afro pessimism" for the December 2017 issue of Contemporary Political Theory.
PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS
In January 2015, Professor Shulman and Professor Bryonn Bain helped launch the NYU Prison Education Program, an initiative to bring college education to incarcerated individuals at the Wallkill Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in New York State’s Ulster County.
