The Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Governance (CCC) is pleased to welcome four visiting scholars for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Richard Avramenko is a visiting scholar from the University of Wisconsin, where he has taught Political Science and Integrated Liberal Studies since 2005. His main areas of interest are ancient and continental political thought, and he has written on topics such as Plato , Aristotle, Xenophon, St. Augustine, Dostoyevsky, Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Voegelin, Heidegger, Canadian identity politics and mortgage and housing politics.
Dr. Avramenko is the author of Courage: The Politics of Life and Limband co-edited Friendship and Politics: Essays in Political Thought, Dostoevsky’s political thoughtAND Aristocratic Spirits in the Democratic Age. Dr. Avramenko is currently working on a new book manuscript titled The Clash of Democracy: Tocqueville and the Egalitarian Mind.
Margaret Blume Freddoso will join the CCCG as a postdoctoral research associate. She received her doctorate in theology from the University of Notre Dame with a focus on ancient and medieval theology, particularly the thought of Thomas Aquinas.
Dr. Freddoso launched the CCCG initiative entitled, “The Natural Economic Order: What Are the Necessary Components of a Good Economy?” The basic aim of the project is to investigate the fundamental harmony between the Catholic understanding of God’s creation and governance of the universe on the one hand, and the empirical discoveries of modern economics about economic order on the other. In collaboration with Notre Dame economics professor Kirk Doran, Dr. Freddoso will create and teach an undergraduate course, “Economics: Divine and Human,” write an undergraduate textbook based on the course, conduct undergraduate discussion seminars, and initiate a scholarly research agenda on the harmony between the Catholic understanding of order in the universe and the empirical findings of modern economics.
Dr. Freddoso has taught as an adjunct professor in Notre Dame’s Liberal Studies Program and the Augustine Institute, and she has worked for Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life. She received a master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame and attended Yale University, where she studied philosophy and literature. She is a co-founder and board member of St. Thomas More Academy.
Luke Foster returns to KKKG as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Political Science. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, where he wrote a political theory dissertation on the question of elite education in democracies, entitled “Excellence for the Democratic Age: Liberal Education and the Mixed Regime.”
Before coming to Notre Dame, Dr. Foster was Visiting Researcher and Lecturer at Sciences Po in Paris. He graduated from Columbia University in 2015, where he studied English and history. This semester, he will teach “Constitutionality, Law, and Politics II: American Constitutionalism.”
Mary Frances Mueller is a 2022-2023 postgraduate student with CCCG. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame, where she majored in the Liberal Studies Program with minors in theology and constitutional studies. As a student, she was a member of the Menard Tocqueville family and served as editor-in-chief of Irish Rover. She is currently working on a book on the contemporary state of higher education, with a particular focus on Catholic universities.
All visiting scholars have offices on the second floor of Jenkins-Nanovic Hall:
- Avramenko – Office 2011
- Cool – Office 2035
- Foster – Office 2047
- Myler – Office 2033
Originally published by IN studies.nd.edu IN August 26, 2022.