Critical Exchange
Sheldon Wolin’s theoretical practice Robyn Marascoa,*, Jason Frankb, Joan Trontoc, Antonio Y. Vázquez-Arroyod and Nicholas Xenose a
Hunter College, CUNY, New York, NY 10065, USA. E-mail: rmarasco@hunter.cuny.edu b Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. E-mail: jf273@cornell.edu c
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. E-mail: jctronto@umn.edu
d
Rutgers University-Newark, Newark, NJ 07102, USA. E-mail: a.vazquez@rutgers.edu e
University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA. E-mail: xenos@polsci.umass.edu *Corresponding author.
Contemporary Political Theory (2017). doi:10.1057/s41296-017-0090-6
The Epic as Form Robyn Marasco As a starting-point it is necessary to reject the classical and modern conception that ascribes to democracy ‘a’ proper or settled form. – Sheldon Wolin (2004, p. 601). Sheldon Wolin died on 21 October 2015, at his home in northwest Oregon. He was 93 years old, survived by his two daughters and two grandchildren. I did not know Professor Wolin personally. I met him only once. It was a brief introduction while waiting for the elevator in Barrows Hall on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. This was several decades after the historic battles he waged there in the 1960s. But even at that time, Berkeley was a special place to study political theory and the East Bay an ideal place for a general political education. We all knew that to be part of Wolin’s tremendous legacy. He is survived by generations of scholars, scattered across the academy and beyond, whose thinking and writing is directed to the basic questions of democracy. 2017 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory www.palgrave.com/journals