Eric Selbin is Professor of Political Science and Holder of the Lucy King Brown Chair. His research interests are in the areas of resistance, rebellion, and revolution, theories of revolution, and socio-political change. Selbin is the author of Revolution, Resistance, and Rebellion: The Power of Story (2010), which has been translated into Arabic, German, Spanish, and Turkish, Modern Latin American Revolutions (1999/1993) and a variety of articles and book chapters primarily on matters revolutionary. He has co-authored with Meghana Nayak, Decentering International Relations (2010) [http://www.southwestern.edu/live/news/4934-rethinking-global-politics]. Selbin is co-editor of the New Millennium Books in International Studies series, Associate Editor of International Studies Perspectives, and was the founding editor of Southwestern University’s Brown Working Papers in the Arts and Sciences. In 2007 he was selected as one of Southwestern University’s All-time “Fav Five” Faculty by the SU Alumni Association and received the Exemplary Teaching Award from the Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church for 2001-2002.

Selbin received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1991, his MA from Louisiana State University in 1984, and his BA from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980. 

Honors & Awards

• Holder of the Lucy King Brown Chair (2014- )
• University Scholar (2006-2015)
• Mr. Homecoming 2012 Association of Southwestern University Alumni
• Association of Southwestern University Alumni Inaugural Faculty Fav Five (2007)
• Cullen Faculty Development Program (2003-6)
• Brown Distinguished Research Professor (1999-2003)
• Southwestern University Exemplary Teacher, General Board of Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church (2001-2002)
• NEH Summer Research Seminar: “New Perspectives in the Comparative Study of Revolutions,” ( 1996)
• Mundy Faculty Fellowships (1995-96, 1998-99)
• Brown Faculty Fellow (1994-95)
• Cullen Faculty Development Program (1993-9).
• Cullen Research Grant (1994)
• Sam Taylor Research Fellowship (1994)

Theories of revolution; resistance, rebellion and revolution, primarily in Latin America and the Caribbean; socio-political change.International Relations theory.

Books:
Revolution, Rebellion, Resistance: The Power of Story (2010).

-Published in German as Gerücht und Revolution: Von der Macht des Weitererzählens (WBG, 2010).

-Published in India (Books for Change, 2011).

-Published in Arabic (from NTC).

-Published in Spanish as El Poder del Relato: Revolucion, Rebelion, Resistencia (Interzona Editora)

-Forthcoming in Turkish (from Abis Yayinlari).

Decentering International Relations. Co-authored with Meghana Nayak (2010).

Modern Latin American Revolutions, rev., 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview, 1999; 1st ed., 1993)

Selected Articles and Book Chapters:

“Singing Resistance, Rebellion and Revolution into Being: Collective Political Action and Song,” with Helen Cordes, in Olaf Kaltmeier & Wilfried Raussert, eds. Sonic Politics: Music and Social Movement in the Americas 1960s to the Present, Ashgate Publishing, 2019

“Spaces and Places of (Im)Possibility and Desire: Transversal Revolutionary Imaginaries in the Twentieth Century Americas,” Forum on Inter-American Research, forthcoming.

“The Undervalued Labor of Curricular and Substantive Diversity: Thoughts From Someone Who Is Part of the Problem,” International Feminist Journal of Politics, vol 16, no. 3 (2014): 505-7.

“Conjugating the Cuban Revolution: It Mattered, It Matters, It Will Matter,” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 36, no. 1 (2009), pp. 21-9.

“What Was Revolutionary About the Iranian Revolution? The Power of Possibility,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, 29(1) (2009): 33-46.

“Stories of Revolution in the Periphery,” in John Foran, David Lane, and Andreja Zivkovic, eds., Revolution in the Making of the Modern World: Social Identities, Globalization, and Modernity (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 130-47.

“Making the World New: Latin American Studies After the Washington Consensus,” Latin American Studies Association Forum, vol. 38, no. 4 (2007), pp. 33-35.

“Zapata’s White Horse and Che’s Beret: Theses on the Future of Revolution,” in John Foran, ed., The Future of Revolutions in the Context of Globalization (London: Zed Books, 2003), pp. 83-94.

“Agency and Culture in Revolutions,” in Jack Goldstone, ed., Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative, and Historical Studies, 3rd ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2003), pp. 76-84. This has been translated into Russian and published as “Deyatel’nost’ i kul’tura v revolutsiyah,” in L.E. Blyakher, B.V. Mezhuyev, A.V. Pavlov (eds) Kontsept “Revolutsiya” v sovremennom politicheskom diskurse (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2008), pp. 184-195).

“Is This the Educational System You Wanted? Feminism and Homeschooling,” Co-authored with Helen Cordes, Jesse Cordes Selbin, and Zoe Cordes Selbin, in Robin Teske and Mary Ann Tetreault, eds. Partial Truths and the Politics of Community: Feminist Approaches to Social Movements, Community, and Power, Vol. 2 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 89-103.

“Resistance, Rebellion, and Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean at the Millennium,” Latin American Research Review, vol. 36, no. 1 (2001), pp.171-92.

“Same as It Ever Was: The Future of Revolution at the End of the Century,” in Mark Katz, ed. Revolution: International Dimensions (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 2000), pp. 284-97.

“Revolution in the Real World: Bringing Agency Back In,” in John Foran, ed., Theorizing Revolutions (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 123-36.

“Contentious Cartography: A Response to Mapping Contentious Politics,” Mobilization, vol. 2, no. 1 (1997), pp. 99-106.