Carens, Joseph H.

PERSONAL:

Married Jennifer Nedelsky; children: two. Education: Holy Cross, A.B. (summa cum laude), 1966; Yale University, M.Phil. (religious studies), 1970, M. Phil. (political science), 1972, Ph.D., 1977.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Office—Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, Room 3018, 100 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada.

CAREER:

University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, professor of political science, 1985—. Taught previously at Princeton University, Lake Forest College, and North Carolina State University. Visiting research fellow, Center for Ethics, Rationality, and Society, University of Chicago, 1991; Hoover fellow, Université Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1993, visiting professor, Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, 1995; Forum Professor, European Forum on Citizenship, European University Institute in Florence, 1996.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Bora Laskin National Fellowship in Human Rights Research, 2001; C.B. Macpherson Award, Canadian Political Science Association, 2002, for Culture, Citizenship, and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness; Connaught fellow, University of Toronto.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market: An Essay in Utopian Politico-Economic Theory, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1981.

(Editor) Democracy and Possessive Individualism: The Intellectual Legacy of C.B. Macpherson, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1993.

(Editor) Is Quebec Nationalism Just? Perspectives from Anglophone Canada, McGill-Queen's University (Buffalo, NY), 1995.

Culture, Citizenship, and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness, Oxford University Press (New York, NY) 2000.

Contributor of chapters to books. Contributor to periodicals, including Boston Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Joseph H. Carens is a professor of political science and the author of several books on contemporary political theory. He has frequently focused on issues related to citizenship, immigration, justice, and equality. In his book Culture, Citizenship, and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness, Carens examines the ways in which typical, long-standing problems inherent in democracies and democratic theory have been entangled with contemporary legal and political clashes over multiculturalism. According to James Johnson, a reviewer for Ethics, Carens succeeds in writing "an exemplary piece of political theory. His argument remains nuanced and civil even where it is most critical." Johnson also praised Carens for being more motivated to write because of important, real-life political problems, rather than philosophical disputes about the nature of democracy. Johnson stated that the variety of substantive examples given to back the author's theses were "among the most attractive and valuable features of the book." Bonnie Honig assessed Culture, Citizenship, and Community for Polity. Honig stated that on the strength of Culture, Citizenship, and Community, "Carens has entered the ranks of those distinguished liberal theorists who seek to rework liberal theory and practice in order to save what is best about liberalism while modifying some of its received doctrines in order better to meet new challenges."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Ethics, April, 2002, James Johnson, review of Culture, Citizenship, and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness, p. 603.

Polity, spring, 2001, Bonnie Honig, review of Culture, Citizenship, and Community, p. 479.

ONLINE

Carnegie Council Web site,http://www.cceia.org/ (March 26, 2007), biographical information about Joseph H. Carens.

University of Toronto Department of Political Science Web site,http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ (March 26, 2007), biographical information about Joseph H. Carens.