Timothy J. Lukes
- Email: Contact Form
- Phone: 408-554-4450
- Location: Vari Hall, 222 Campus Map
Education: Ph.D., Political Economy, University of Toronto, 1981; A.B., Political Science, University of California, 1972.
Timothy J. Lukes teaches political philosophy, American political behavior, and research methods. His research interests include the Italian Renaissance, American political culture, and contemporary political thought. His books have won awards from the Women's Caucus of the American Political Science Association and from the Asian American Studies Association. In 1995, Lukes received the Carl I. Wheat Memorial Award for his article, "Progressivism Off-Broadway: Reform Politics in San Jose, California, 1880-1920." The award is given to the essay judged to be the year's best in the Southern California Quarterly (University of California Press). In 1996 Lukes was awarded the Northern California Phi Beta Kappa Outstanding Teaching Award. He has received grants from the California Council for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of State and Local Histories, the Sourisseau Academy, and the Irvine Foundation. For his work in multi-culturalism, he has received formal commendations from the City of San Jose and the County of Santa Clara.
Moving into the new millennium, Lukes engaged the subtleties of affirmative action, discovering that crucial to the debate was the concept of “merit,” a concept that scholars had not fully clarified. One product of this interest was an essay published in Public Affairs Quarterly regarding the “Pelagian” and the “Augustinian” concept of merit, and how each represented well the two sides in our modern discourse. The article was co-authored with a formidable student, Bonnie Campodonico, as part of an ongoing practice to assist in the development of aspiring scholars. In 2008 Lukes entered another scholarly realm that necessarily involves diversity issues—that of immigration. In an article published in the Journal of Law and Policy, former student (and now distinguished attorney) Minh Hoang joined Lukes in arguing that the normally narrow concept of adverse possession was quite relevant to the immigration debate, that while American society might legitimately consider tightening borders in the future, there is no justification for retroactively imposing stricter standards for emigrants who were in many cases encouraged to come as crucial contributors to economic prosperity. In 2023, Lukes published an essay in the Journal of Popular Culture that reflected a continuing interest in gender dynamics, arguing that the macho habitat of NASCAR is a façade, an expression of “masculine overcompensation” intended to protect male fans whose attraction to stock car racing was actually to its aesthetic components.
- Introduction to Political Theory
- Applied Quantitative Methods in American Political Behavior
- Contemporary Political Philosophy
- Aesthetics and Politics
- “Concrete Expressionism: Harley Earl, William France, and NASCAR Aesthetics,” The Journal of Popular Culture, (June 2023).
- Descending to the Particulars: The Palazzo, The Piazza, and Machiavelli's Republican Modes and Orders, The Journal of Politics, (April 2009).
- Teaching Wisdom to Interest: Book Five of Plato's Republic, PS: Political Science and Politics, (January 2009). (Co-authored with SCU student Mary Scudder.)
- Putting Space Between Beauty and Politics, Chronicle of Higher Education, (December 21, 2007).
- Martialing Machiavelli: Reassessing the Military Reflections, The Journal of Politics, (November 2004).
- Lionizing Machiavelli, The American Political Science Review, (September 2001).
- "Merit Badgering: Dissecting a Slippery Concept in the Affirmative Action Debate," Public Affairs Quarterly, (July 1996). (Co-authored with SCU student Bonnie Campodonico.)