Peter Augustine Lawler is Dana Professor and Chair of the Department
of Government and International Studies at Berry College. He teaches
courses in political philosophy and American politics and has won
several awards from Berry for doing so.
He is executive editor of the acclaimed quarterly journal, Perspectives
on Political Science, and has been chair of the politics and
literature section of the American Political Science Association.
He also serves on the editorial board of the new bilingual critical
edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
and on the editorial boards of several journals. He is a member
of the Society of Scholars at the Madison Center at Princeton University,
the George Washington Professor on the American founding for the
Society of Cincinnati for the state of Georgia, and he is a member
of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics.
He has written or edited ten books. His newest book, Aliens
in America: The Strange Truth about Our Souls is a starred,
featured selection in Booklist, the journal of the American
Library Association. Another recent book, Postmodernism Rightly
Understood, was also widely reviewed and praised. His very
long introduction to a new edition of Orestes Brownson’s The
American Republic is now available.
His American Political Rhetoric (edited with Robert Schaefer)
is used in introductory American government courses at a sizeable
number of colleges and universities. The fifth edition was just
published.
Lawler has published more than 125 scholarly articles, chapters,
and reviews. His writings have appeared in such scholarly journals
as the Review of Politics, Government and Opposition, The South
Atlantic Quarterly, The International Philosophical Quarterly, American
Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Gravitas, Interpretation:
A Journal of Political Philosophy, Polity, Modern Age, Public Integrity,
The Intercollegiate Review, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The
Public Interest, Perspectives on Political Science, First Things,
The Good Society, The New Atlantis, and Society. He is also
published in more popular magazines such as The Weekly Standard,
Current, The Claremont Review of Books, The University Bookman,
The American Enterprise, Crisis, The National Review, and
National Review Online.
Some of the topics of his recent articles and chapters include Shakespeare’s
The Tempest, William Alexander Percy, Walker Percy, Alexis
de Tocqueville, biotechnology, bourgeois bohemian virtue, religion
and conservatism, compassionate conservatism, conservationism, the
filmmaker Whit Stillman on nature and grace, disco and democracy,
Casablanca and the American dream, the future of human
nature, the utopian eugenics of our time, the rise and fall of sociobiology,
Richard Rorty, grade inflation and the Ivy League, Harvey Mansfield
and Carey McWilliams, caregiving and the American individual, Christopher
Lasch, virtue voters, culture wars, Flannery O’Connor and
nihilism, Orestes Brownson, and postmodernism rightly understood.
Lawler has given invited lectures at more than 50 colleges and universities.
He has received a large number of grants from both the Liberty Fund
and the Earhart Foundation, as well as numerous other foundations.
Dr. Lawler recently edited a book on Tocqueville and American political
life today and the fifth edition of American Political Rhetoric.
He wrote an introduction to the new Sheed and Ward edition of John
Courtney Murray’s We Hold These Truths, and book
chapters on religion and the American founding, Locke and American
greatness, Flannery O’Connor, and Casablanca.
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