Dustin Gish
Honors College Faculty
Director, Phronêsis
Email: dgish@central.uh.edu
Webpage: uh.academia.edu/DustinGish
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Dr. Dustin Gish holds the rank of full professor (Instructional) in The Honors College at the University of Houston, where he teaches the college's signature Great Books course, "The Human Situation: Antiquity and Modernity," as well as courses in the history of political philosophy and American political thought.
Dr. Gish's major publications range from classical political philosophy to the political thought in the plays of William Shakespeare and early American political thought. He is the author of Xenophon's Socratic Rhetoric: Philosophy, Erōs, and Virtue in the Symposium (Bloomsbury 2022) -- the only monograph-length commentary on this charming dialogue. He is also the Senior Editor of Brill's Companion to the Reception of Xenophon, which will be published in 2026 as one of the forthcoming Volumes in Brill's Companions to Classical Reception Series. In his early American scholarship, he is the co-author of Thomas Jefferson and the Science of Republican Government (Cambridge University Press, 2017) -- a monograph-length study of the political thought in Jefferson’s only published book, "Notes on the State of Virginia." He is also the contributing co-editor of the edited volume, Rival Visions: How Jefferson and His Contemporaries Defined the Early American Republic published in The Jeffersonian America Series, University of Virginia Press, 2021). He is currently at work on two books projects: one, an account of Thomas Jefferson's diplomatic career in France; and the other, an in-depth political study of Machiavelli's princes.
Dr. Gish received his interdisciplinary doctorate from the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas (2004), with a concentration in politics. He earned a master's in politics at the University of Dallas (1995), and a master's in Liberal Education at St. John's College in Santa Fe (1992). His undergraduate degrees are in political science, philosophy, and history from the University of Oklahoma (1991). Prior to his arrival at the Honors College, he taught political theory and american government courses as visiting assistant professor of political science at the College of the Holy Cross (2007-2012) and held visiting appointments in the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage at the University of Oklahoma (2012-2013), and the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport University in Virginia (2013-2014). In 2013, he received a residential fellowship for research at the International Center for Jefferson Studies and the Jefferson Foundation Library at Monticello. From 1999 until 2006, Dr. Gish also lived in Italy, teaching a wide variety of courses in classical rhetoric and political philosophy at the University of Dallas Rome Campus, John Cabot University, and the American University of Rome.
Dr. Gish's other publications include 8 edited volumes -- The Quest for Excellence (University Press of America, 2016), Resistance to Tyrants, Obedience to God: Reason, Religion, and Republicanism at the American Founding (Lexington, 2013), Shakespeare and the Body Politic (Lexington Books, 2013), Souls With Longing: Representations of Honor and Love in Shakespeare (Lexington Books, 2011), The Political Thought of Xenophon(Special Issue of the journal POLIS, 2009), Shakespeare's Political Thought and Symposium on Plato's Philosophers (Special Issues of Perspectives on Political Science, 2012 and 2011). Over the course of three decades, he has authored scores of articles, book chapters, and review essays in the history of political philosophy (Homer, Xenophon, Plato, Aristophanes, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Leo Strauss), American political thought (Franklin, Jefferson, Douglass), politics and literature (Austen, Melville), and visual rhetoric (Pope Julius II's Rome, Civic Republicanism in Siena and Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Good Government). His articles and reviews have appeared in Interpretation: Journal of Political Philosophy, The Journal of Politics, History of Political Thought, Philosophy and Literature, Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought, Perspectives on Political Science, The Review of Politics, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, The Medieval Review, Classical World, and Literature.