Stuart Gray Associate Professor of Politics

Huntley 315
540-458-5879
grays@wlu.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Stuart Gray is an Associate Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University. Before joining the faculty at W&L, Gray was a Charles and Amy Scharf Post-Doctoral Fellow and Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University. He teaches and conducts research on political theory, with a focus on the history of political thought, Greek and Indian political theory, and cross-cultural political thought. His published work in these areas has examined topics such as rule, political realism, human-nonhuman relations, and comparative methodology. He has published book reviews in Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, and Law, Culture and the Humanities. His peer-reviewed work has appeared in journals such as Political Theory, History of Political Thought, The Review of Politics, Philosophy East and West, and Journal of World Philosophies. His work has also appeared in edited volumes such as The Edinburgh Companion to Political Realism (2018), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory (2020), and Political Theory on Death and Dying (2021). His books include A Defense of Rule: Origins of Political Thought in Greece and India (Oxford University Press, 2017), and The Political Theory of the Bhagavad-Gītā: Deep Ideology, Nationalism, and Democratic Life on the Indian Subcontinent (De Gruyter, forthcoming 2025). Interested in the relationship between language and political thinking, he also reads and translates ancient Greek and Sanskrit.

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara

M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara

B.A., University of California, Davis

Research

History of Political Thought (western and non-western), Global-Comparative Political Theory, Greek Political Thought, South Asian Political Thought, Politics and Religion

Teaching

Introduction to Political Philosophy, Classical Political Philosophy, Modern Political Philosophy, Contemporary Political Philosophy, Freedom, Gandhi and His Critics, Black Mirror, Indian Epic and Political Philosophy