Dr. Jeffrey Church awarded Best First Book prize

Political theorist’s book on Hegel and Nietzche earns national recognition

Jeffrey Church, associate professor in the Department of Political Science, has been awarded the Best First Book prize by the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association. 

His book, Infinite Autonomy: The Divided Individual in the Political Thought of G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche, was published by Penn State University Press in 2012. 

The First Book Award recognizes the best first book published in the previous year by a scholar in the early stages of his or her career in the area of political theory/philosophy. Committee members described Dr. Church’s book as a “remarkably fresh and counter-intuitive take on these two German thinkers.”

Dr. Church is a political theorist whose research area is the history of modern political thought, with particular interest in Continental thought from Jean-Jacques Rousseau through Friedrich Nietzsche. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Ursinus College and has master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Notre Dame.