POTSDAM - Christopher C. Robinson, an associate professor of political science in Clarkson University’s School of Arts & Sciences, was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award during the university’s 119th commencement ceremony today.

Robinson teaches an array of courses in political theory, American politics, and public law, and is co-advisor to the University’s Law and Society Program. For more than a decade, he has taught in the HEOP Summer Pre-freshman Experience and has engaged in various diversity initiatives on campus.

This spring, he was a visiting scholar at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont.

Robinson’s scholarly work has focused on political and legal theory in the contemporary era, with particular focus on language and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In 2011, he was a Fulbright Scholar to the Political Science Department at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea.

Robinson’s book, Wittgenstein and Political Theory: The View from Somewhere, was published in 2009 by Edinburgh and Columbia University Press. This study was the first comprehensive examination of Wittgenstein’s philosophy by a political theorist in almost 40 years. It received significant scholarly attention in both Europe and the United States.

Since completing the book, Robinson has embarked on two projects. The first is a book-length manuscript, Democracy and Ecological Economics: The Politics of Sustainability, which examines the implications of arguments pertaining to the unsustainability of economic growth and impending ecological catastrophe for democratic theory. The second project is a study of the relationship between literature and political theory. Robinson’s article on the novel trilogy of Albert Camus is part of this investigation.

In addition to his teaching, Robinson has served on many professional and university committees and is advisor to several groups, including Phi Sigma Sigma, the Philosophy Club, and the Pre-Med Program. In 2010, he was awarded Clarkson’s first Martin Luther King Jr. Award.

For more than a decade, Robinson has also been the co-host of North Country Public Radio’s “Readers and Writers on the Air.” In this capacity he has helped bring the voices and thoughts of some of the world’s most important writer’s to the region, while also publicizing the scholarly and literary contributions of local faculty and writers.

Robinson has been a faculty member in the department since 1998. He received his Ph.D. from SUNY Albany, his M.A. from SUNY Albany and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his B.A. from Siena College, all in political science.

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