Regular Faculty

Rita Koganzon is a political theorist who studies education, childhood, and the family in political thought. Her first book, Liberal States, Authoritarian Families: Childhood and Education in Early Modern Thought, examines the justifications for authority over children from Jean Bodin to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and explores how and why Locke and Rousseau departed from their absolutist predecessors by refusing to model the family on the state but nonetheless preserved authority over children within the family for the sake of the liberty of adults. Her second book project focuses on American education, tracing the debate between proponents and opponents of schooling from the early republic through the twentieth century.

In addition to her academic work, Koganzon also contributes book reviews and essays to the Hedgehog Review, National Affairs, The Point, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. She received her PhD in Government from Harvard University, and her BA in History from the University of Chicago. Before coming to the University of North Carolina, she taught at the University of Houston and the University of Virginia.