Teaching
My teaching interests largely interact and intersect with my research interests, focusing either on issues relating to racial and ethnic politics, the American Political Economy, or American Politics more generally.Intro to American Politics, Spring 2025
What makes American institutions American? This course is designed to introduce students to the institutions and dynamics of American Politics. We will also have a particular focus on how we might understand what distinguishes American Politics from politics in other parts of the world. Looking from both the vantage point of “above” in terms of elite processes in institutions like the Presidency, Congress and the Judiciary as well as from “below” in terms of mass public opinion and the impact of race, class, gender, and other axes of identity, this course will chart what about the political system is (and isn’t) idiosyncratic. In so doing, this course will also act as an introduction to the field of political science and what it means to study topics using that lens.
A Seat at the Table?: Race and Representation in American Political Institutions, Spring 2025
The fight for inclusion into American society and culture created new opportunities and dynamics for American politics but how might we understand if and how these political battles translated into material gains for marginalized groups? This course will look at the ways in which representation became a political demand in ways both tied and untied from other goals like anti-poverty and human rights, the economic and judicial processes that shaped the demand for political representation, the ways that representational politics plays out specifically in the realm of Black politics, and the dialectical relationship between politics and popular culture in the 21st Century. Can representation save us? Should it?
American Political Economy, Fall 2025
How does public policy affect markets and the economy? How do broad shifts in the macroeconomy affect political outcomes? Perhaps most importantly of all, how do Americans make sense of and navigate the interplay between American political institutions and major economic institutions? This course is intended to interrogate and more deeply understand the unique features of the American Political Economy (APE) in distinction to other “affluent” democracies, how these distinct features shape political economy, and how political attitudes and behavior responds to these outcomes.