• Ph.D., University of Chicago,1966
• M.A., University of Chicago, 1962
• Doct., University of Nancy-France, 1961
• B.A., Michigan State University, 1959

• Professor

• Political Philosophy, Law and Society. Research interests include the history of political philosophy, especially in the classical Greek, medieval Islamic and Enlightenment periods, the political novel and short story as they relate to the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma.

• The history of political philosophy: ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary
• Literature and politics, especially as reflected in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
• The Political Thought of African Americans
• Seminars on selected important texts: Rousseau, Julie or the New Heloise; Maimonides, the Guide of the Perplexed; Plato, The Laws; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.

Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, Charles Butterworth specializes in the study of medieval Islamic political philosophy. Pursuit of this academic interest has permitted him to live and study in most of the Arabic speaking countries of the Middle East and North Africa as well as in Europe. From time to time, he has lectured and taught at universities in Egypt, the West Bank, Gaza, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Zaire, Ivory Coast, Liberia, France, and Hungary.

Professor Butterworth's publications include critical editions of most of the Middle Commentaries written by Averroes on Aristotle's logic; translations of books and treatises by Averroes, Alfarabi, and Alrazi, as well as Maimonides; and studies of different aspects of the political teaching of these and other thinkers in the ancient, medieval, and modern tradition of philosophy. Butterworth has also written monograph analyses of the political thought of Frantz Fanon and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He is a member of several learned organizations, past-president of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies (ACSIS), and president of the Société Internationale pour l'Étude de l'Histoire de la Philosophie et la Science Arabe et Islamique (SIHSPAI).

Trained in political philosophy and Arabic as well as Islamic civilization at the University of Chicago, where he received an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science, Charles Butterworth has also studied at the University of Ayn Shams in Egypt, the University of Bordeaux, and the University of Nancy in France (receiving a doctorate in philosophy from the latter). He received his B.A. from Michigan State University.

Before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland, Professor Butterworth taught at the University of Chicago and Federal City College (now the University of the District of Columbia). He has also taught at St. John's College, Georgetown University, and Harvard University, in addition to Marmara University, the University of Bordeaux, the University of Grenoble, the University of Paris I (Sorbonne), the University of Paris X (Nanterre), and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.

For several years he was the Principal Investigator for the Smithsonian sponsored Project in Medieval Islamic Logic in Cairo, Egypt. He has also been the Principal Investigator for a project on medieval Islamic logic sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and has organized a two-week Salzburg seminar on "The Commonality of Cultural Traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam."

A long-standing interest in the Palestinian-Israeli debate led to his involvement with CEEPAT (Continuing Education and Extension Project for Palestinians and Teachers on the West Bank and in Gaza). CEEPAT, a program for higher education addressed primarily to teachers in service, seeks to sharpen thinking skills and increase general learning so that teachers might come to think of themselves as having something worthwhile to pass on to their students and gain the confidence to do so without resorting to methods that stifle the interest of their students.

In 1992-1993, he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. during which time he pursued a project on the relationship between revelation and political philosophy.

• May-August, 2000, German Academic Exchange Fellowship, Friedrich-Alexander Universität, Erlangen, Germany
• Oct 99-Mar 2000, Senior Fulbright Research and Lecturing Fellowship, Friedrich-Alexander Universität, Erlangen, Germany
• 1990-1991 UMCP Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award

E-Mail

• cebworth@gvpt.umd.edu

Other Links

• Download Prof. Butterworth's CV