University of California, Irvine
Department of Political Science
Race, Ethnicity, and Politics
Although fundamental to the understanding of American (and increasingly international) politics, the study of race and ethnicity has often been relegated to a second tier in the discipline of political science. UCI's Department of Political Science has very recently emerged as a national leader in research, graduating training and undergraduate teaching in the field of race, ethnicity, and politics. Our first Ph.D. in this area, Matthew Barreto, now an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington; our second, Natalie Masuoka, received a post-doc at Duke. Faculty recruitments over the past several years have placed UCI in the enviable position of having leading scholars of African American, Asian American, and U.S. Latino politics as well as scholars of immigrant political incorporation. This group is noteworthy because of the rich variety of methodological approaches that they collectively employ, including survey analysis, historical interpretation, and elite interviews. Many of the faculty members in this grouping are affiliated with other Departments and programs at UCI, creating a richer mix of students in the courses that they teach.
UCI's wealth of scholars working in the field of race, ethnicity, and politics makes it uniquely positioned not only to add significantly to the growing body of scholarship in this field, but also train the next generation of race/ethnicity scholars in the field of political science. But the resources available to graduate students interested in race and ethnicity is not limited to seven members of the Department of Political Science. Indeed, distinguished as is the Department faculty within this area, there are numerous other faculty at UCI from whom students interested in race and ethnicity can learn, and students with an interest in race and ethnicity are encouraged to explore courses outside the Department.
To further assist graduate students in the area of race and ethnicity to receive truly multi-disciplinary graduate training the Political Science Department has just developed a collaborative relationship with leading scholars in race and ethnicity in the Department of Sociology to allow for participation in their courses by political science graduate students. That arrangement also includes faculty from other relevant units such as Anthropology and Chicano-Latino Studies, and there is outreach to scholars in the Humanities as well. The Sociology Department is among one of several UCI units very prominent in the race and ethnicity field, with nearly a dozen scholars in this area. In addition, UCI has an internationally respected interdisciplinary Center for Research in Immigration and Public Policy, with ongoing funded research projects in which several political scientists participate, as well as an interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Demographic and Social Analysis whose course offerings can be taken by political science graduate students. Also, special funding opportunities for graduate students with interests in race and ethnicity are available through the Center for the Study of Democracy.
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Louis DeSipio is the author and co-author of several books on Latino politics, including the widely reviewed and cited Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New Electorate (University of Virginia Press 1996). DeSipio's research analyzes Latino political incorporation and behavior, linking questions of immigration to the political science literature on Latinos. A second strand of his scholarship pertains to the American policymaking process regarding immigration, naturalization, and citizenship. DeSipio is jointly affiliated with the Chicano-Latino Studies program at UCI. In addition to offering courses on Latino politics at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, he teaches the introductory course in minority politics, a unique feature of UCIs undergraduate degree program in political science. |
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Lisa Garcia Bedolla is the author of the forthcoming Fluid Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and Politics in Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2004). She offers a theoretical perspective on Latino political solidarity in the midst of changing social, political, and economic conditions over time. Also jointly affiliated with the Chicano Latino Studies Program, she offers courses in Latino politics as well as those pertaining to racial and ethnic minorities, class, and gender at both the graduate and undergraduate level. |
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Bernard Grofman is a distinguished scholar of minority voting rights and the law, having served as an expert witness in over a dozen voting rights lawsuits, including the landmark Gingles case. Professor Grofman is the co-author of the award winning Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990 (Princeton University Press, 1994) and the co-editor of Controversies in Minority Voting: The Voting Rights Act in Perspective (Brookings University Press, 1992). |
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Helen Ingram is Professor and the Warmington Chair in Social Ecology, and teaches in our graduate program. Her scholarship examines how minority groups are socially constructed and the impact these constructions have on American public policies. Recent political science students whose dissertations she has chaired have written on topics that include the role of social constructions in American immigration policies as well as environmental racism and the political activism of minority groups. |
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Claire Jean Kim analyzes the nature of racial power in the U.S. and how it affects the strategies and goals of insurgents and members of the political elite in the American politic scene. She is the author of Bitter Fruit, The Politics of the Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (Yale University Press 2000) which was awarded the Ralph Bunche book award for the best book published in political science that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism by the American Political Science Association. Kim offers courses in the Department at the undergraduate and graduate level on race relations, group power, and language that are also cross-listed in Asian American and African American Studies. |
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Kamal Sadiq specializes in Comparative Politics, Immigration and International Security with a particular emphasis on developing countries. Specifically, his research focuses on immigration from and within developing countries, security implications of global criminal flows, ethnic conflict, Asian security, and International Relations theory. His regional expertise is in Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Southern Philippines) and South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh). |
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Caesar Sereseres addresses questions pertaining to race and ethnicity in the international sector as well as the impact of U.S.-Mexican relations on America's domestic and foreign policymaking process. A member of the Chicano Latino Studies Program as well, he is a popular Professor in the Department, the recipient of a 2003 teaching award, and presently serves as the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the School of Social Sciences. |
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Katherine Tate has
published widely in the field of African American politics. Her most
recent book is Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and their
Representatives in the U.S. Congress
(Princeton University Press, 2003).
She has conducted several national political surveys of Blacks, probing
their attitudes toward national American institutions, including Congress
and the Supreme Court, and leading national figures, including the
Reverend Jesse Jackson and Secretary of State Colin Powell. She's also
affiliated with UCI's Department of African American Studies. |
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Rudy Torres is affiliated with the Department as well as the Chicano Latino Studies Program. He is the author and editor of a wide range of publications on the impact of racism, economic inequality, and geography on the public policymaking process, including Latino/a Thought: Culture, Politics, and Society (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). |
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Carole Uhlaner is also actively engaged in seminal research on Latino and Asian American political behavior, notably their partisanship, voting behavior, and political representation, having produced a series of publications on this topic over the last few years. |
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