Jill LockeFaculty

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. 

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 (with Dr. Eileen Hunt) 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 was in residence in Oslo during the Spring 2022 semester. 

Professor Locke is working on a second book, Girl Heroes: Why Girls Shouldn't Have to Save Us, about high-profile girl activists who are praised as the vanguard of social change. She has presented from this project at McMaster University, the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, University of Oslo, University of Copenhagen, and University College Cork. She has recently published two related pieces: "Chronicle of The Girls' Bureau of Freedom and Uplift," co-authored with Dr. Ainsley LeSure (Political Theory, 50th Anniversary issue); and "Beyond Heroes and Hostility: Greta Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate, and the Transnational Politics of Girl Power," (NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research). Her Fall GWS-380 colloquium course, "The Politics and Culture of 'Girl Power,'" is organized around these themes. 

Her third (and final?) book will be a political theory of US post-Civil War Reconstruction, the promise and destruction of which has framed her work on shame and schools. 

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.  

She regularly speaks to media about participatory democracy and gender and politics, particularly abortion and reproductive care. 

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

Courses Taught