Alison McQueen

About

Alison McQueen is an associate professor in the Departments of Political Science and History (by courtesy) at Stanford University. Her research focuses on early modern political thought and the history of international relations thought. Her book Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times (Cambridge University Press, 2018) traces the responses of three canonical political realists—Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Hans Morgenthau—to hopes and fears about the end of the world.

She is currently working on two book projects. The first, Absolving God: Hobbes’s Scriptural Politics, tracks and explains changes in Thomas Hobbes’s strategies of scriptural argument over time. The second examines treason and political betrayal in the history of political thought.

McQueen has also published several articles on questions connected to her book projects and standalone pieces on political realism, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Isaiah Berlin.  

Her public work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times.