Jill Locke

Professor Locke is on sabbatical for the 2021-2022 academic year.

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Professor Jill Locke came to Gustavus in 2000 and teaches a range of courses in the history of political thought, democratic theory, and feminist theory. 

In addition to articles and essays in democratic and feminist theory, Professor Locke is also the author of Democracy and the Death of Shame: Political Equality and Social Disturbance (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and co-editor of Feminist Interpretations of Alexis de Tocqueville (Penn State University Press, 2008). She has presented her work on shame and shamelessness at universities and colleges throughout the US and Europe, specifically the University of Amsterdam, University of Jyväskylä (Finland), University of Oslo, University of Southern Denmark, University of Vienna, London School of Economics, Macalester College, and Minnesota State University (Mankato, MN). 

Professor Locke's work on shame and her concept of "unashamed citizenship" has figured prominently in Scandinavian teaching and research on literature, affect, and democratizing processes since the publication of Democracy and the Death of Shame in 2016. She is part of a multi-year project at the University of Olso and will be in residence during the Spring 2022 semester. 

Professor Locke is currently working on a new project, tentatively titled Revolting Girls: From Little Rock to the Climate Strike, about youth activism and the ways in which the figure of the "the girl" circulates in both political theory and activist politics. She has had the opportunity to share that work with colleagues at McMaster University (Canada) and the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and will lecture from this project in Oslo, Copenhagen, and Cork (Ireland) in the spring of 2022.

Professor Locke has held fellowships from the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation (1999-2000), the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at Tulane University (2006-07), and the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, where she participated in Professor Danielle Allen's Egalitarianisms seminar (2014-15). She won the 2017 Gustavus Adolphus College award for Faculty Scholarly Accomplishment.  

Originally from Seattle, Professor Locke has fully embraced the pleasures of Minnesota  -- winters and all. 

Courses Taught