Professor Benjamin is the department's scholar of political theory, the foundation upon which the study of political science grew into a distinctive discipline.  Absent familiarity with this foundation, knowledge of other matters in political science is but tenuously held.  Students of political theory at Stonehill will become well acquainted with both classical and modern political philosophers.  Among our canon are Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics, Leviathan By Thomas Hobbes, Locke's Second Treatise Of Government, Rousseau’s On The Social Contract, On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, and works crucial to modern interpretations of political issues by contemporary moral and political philosophers such as John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Martha Nussbaum, Issiah Berlin, and Hannah Arendt.

For the spring 2007 semester,  Professor Benjamin, will be taking a well earned sabbatical to work on the completion of her book, THE CATASTROPHIC SELF: Philosophy, Memoir, and Medical Trauma.  The book is scheduled to come out in an interdisciplinary series put out by Rodopi Press, overseen by Senior Editor Dr. Robert Fisher.  Some of the work will draw on insights of other interdisciplinary scholars during conferences specifically held for such interchange and dialogue.   THE CATASTROPHIC SELF examines three routes by which the self reconceptualizes itself and operates, in external and internal worlds, in response to the embodied experience of catastrophic illness, and explores how these worlds are themselves re-configured in the process.  In addition to her written work, Professor Benjamin looks forward to attending two conferences relevant to her work.  For the second year in a row, she hopes to participate in a conference on Making Sense of Dying & Death and, for the third year in a row, in a conference on Making Sense of Health, Illness, & Disease.  Both conferences are currently scheduled to take place in Oxford