JHI Award

November 30, 2017

Congratulations to Political Scientist Rebecca Kingston who has been awarded a Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) Research Fellowship (2018-2019). Research Fellows are University of Toronto tenured faculty members by the time of their fellowship, chosen for their distinction in achievements relative to their career stage, the excellence of their proposed project, and its relation to the annual theme which is Reading Faces – Reading Minds for 2018-2019.

Her project, entitled ‘Reading Faces, Reading Minds in the Public Realm: Early Modern Translations of Plutarch and their Impact on Conceptions and Practices of Public Life’ is a part of a larger study of the reception of Plutarch’s Lives and Moralia in French and English political thought 1500-1800. From the beginning of the 16th century, Plutarch’s work was circulated and translated into the vernacular by a number of scholars with a keen interest in matters of public life who reflected on the nature of public life and its expectations in terms of how those in a public role both saw and were seen. During her time as a JHI fellow Rebecca will focus on her research related to the latter part of her project and in particular with a focus on the ways Plutarch was invoked in political argument in France and England in the 17th and 18th centuries. This will contribute to her broader objective to offer a new account of the development of political thought in France and England in the early-modern and modern period.

Professor Kingston has taught (and previously tenured) at Saint Francis University and is a Life Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. She is the author of Public Passion: Rethinking the Grounds for Political Justice (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2011) and Montesquieu and the Parlement of Bordeaux (Librairie Droz, 1996) as well as many articles on Montesquieu; a volume co-edited (with Elizabeth Sawyer) of Plutarch’s Writings is forthcoming from Cambridge UP. Her research has been driven by a longstanding interest in the role of emotions in the historical development of political theory, and more recently, in the reception of Classical texts in political thought.