2018 Race, Ethnicity, and U.S. Politics
This spring, Professors Larry Evans and Christine Nemacheck are hosting a one-credit Government seminar titled Race, Ethnicity, and U.S. Politics. Over the course of the semester, different speakers will visit the lecture-based course to talk about important topics on race, U.S. politics, and public policy in 2018.
Other students and community members are invited to the seminar. With the exception of speaker Shatema Threadcraft, the seminar meets Thursdays from 5:00-6:30PM in Tucker Theatre (Tucker 127A). Speakers will cover topics including voting rights, income inequality, criminal justice issues, and racial politics.
Current Schedule:
February 8th: Khalia Brown-Dean
Brown-Dean is currently an Associate Professor of Political Science at Quinnipiac University and formerly the Peter Strauss Family Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University. A nationally recognized expert on the politics of criminal justice, she has published extensively in edited volumes and scholarly journals. A native of Lynchburg, Virginia, she holds a key to that city granted by the mayor, who proclaimed May 6th Professor Brown-Dean Day. Her presentation will focus on race and criminal justice.
February 20th: Shatema Threadcraft
She is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, and currently the Ralph E. and Doris M Hannsmann Scholar at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton University. She also is the 2018 Braithwait Lecturer at the College of William and Mary. She has published extensively about race, gender, and politics. Currently, she is conducting research for a book about race, gender and the politics of death in the U.S., and that topic will be the focus of her presentation.
February 22nd: Keesha Middlemass
Middlemass is currently an Associate Professor of Political Science at Trinity University. She also is a former Andrew Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow on Race, Crime and Justice at the Vera Institute of Justice, as well as a former Congressional Fellow of the American Political Science Association. She has published extensively about race, American institutions, and public policy, including a 2017 book about race and the politics of prisoner reentry (NYU Press). Her presentation will draw on her recent book.
March 15th: Matthew Mendez
He is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at California State University, Channel Islands. A recent PhD graduate of the University of Southern California, he received the award for the best dissertation by the American Political Science Association’s Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, and was also referenced in a “friend of the court” brief filed for the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court case, Evenwel v. Abbott. His research focuses on the representation by U.S. legislators of undocumented immigrants, and that will be the subject of his presentation.
