Junior Americanist Workshop Series

A virtual workshop for American politics research.

Previous Panels and Events

MPSA 2023 Conference-Within-a-Conference

Find out more about our mini-conference at MPSA 2023 here

Spring 2024 Schedule

February 14–Political Participation and Voting

• Noah McKinnie Braun, “Voter ID Laws Impact Turnout Through Registration” (Discussant: Michael Hamner)
• Sara Kirshbaum, “Standing in the Gateway: Incidental Participation as a Mobilizer for Voting and Donating” (Discussant: Janine Parry)

February 28–Social Media

• Tyler Leigh, “The Medium Matters: How Social Media Undermines Public Support for Free Expression” (Discussant: Kevin Munger)
• Maggie Macdonald, “Testing the Interest Group Connection: Campaigns on Twitter” (Discussant: Rachel Blum)

March 13–Race and Elite Rhetoric

• Roxanne Rahnama, “Deploying Ideology to Maintain Dominance: Mobilization around the ‘Lost Cause’ in the U.S. South” (Discussant: Jake Grumbach)
• Andrene Wright, “Saying, Seeing and Believing: A Framing Experiment on Black Voters’ Support for Black Women Candidates” (Discussant: Andrea Benjamin)

March 27–Legislative Effectiveness

• Jacob Lollis and Mackenzie Dobson, “I’m Coming Out! How Voter Discrimination Produces Effective LGBTQ Lawmakers” (Discussant: Patrick Egan)
• Darrian Stacy, “Wealth and Policymaking in the U.S. House of Representatives” (Discussant: Geoff Lorenz)

April 24–Congressional Elections and Their Implications

• Gabriel Foy-Sutherland, “Proxy Campaigns”
• Kisoo Kim “Lame Duck by Primary: Effects of Electoral Incentives on U.S. House Representatives” (Discussant: Julia Park)

May 8–Inequality in America

• Daniella Alva, “Inequality is in the Eye of the Beholder: The Impact of Personal Experiences on Inequality Perceptions”
• Erika Vallejo “Working-Class State Legislative Campaigns: Are They Successful?”

Fall 2023 Schedule

September 27: Interest Groups

• Mellissa Meisels, “Campaign Agendas and Issue Group Strategy in Congressional Primaries” (Discussant: Kristina Miler)
• Amy Meli, “Take Action Now! How Group Type Influences Member Mobilization Strategies” (Discussant: Geoff Lorenz)

October 11: Groups & Survey Scale Development

• Joshua Thorp, Body Politic: Disability and Political Cohesion (Discussant: Andrew Engelhardt)
• Raquel Centeno, “When Party and Race Align: Perceived Racial Discrimination’s Relationship with Affective Polarization”

October 25: Congressional Representation

• Ryan Dawkins, “Emotional Appeals, Congressional Communication, and Affective Position-Taking in Congressional Representation” (Discussant: Annelise Russell)
• Christian Hosam, “Triaging Representation: Black Representatives Legislating Under Constraint” (Discussant: Chloe Thurston)

November 6: Professional Development Panel–How to Be a Journal Reviewer

• Panelists: Celeste Montoya, Nadia Brown, Christina Grose
• Moderator: David Miller

November 8: Immigration in America

• Michelangelo Landgrave, “Immigration is Difficult?! Informing Voters About Immigration Policy Fosters Pro-immigration Views” (Discussant: Roberto Carlos)
• Kaiyu Li, The Politics of Chinatown Development in American Cities (Discussant: Justin Gest)

November 29: Responsiveness

• Elizabeth Mitchell Elder, “Responsiveness to Corruption: Evidence from U.S. Local Governments” (Discussant: Julia Payson)
• John Wagner, “Agenda Diversity and Congressional Responsiveness: The Case of the Vanishing Consensus” (Discussant: Scott Meinke)

December 13: Inside the Minds of Voters

• Kevin Sparrow, “The Limits of Racial Cues: Black Voters, Ideology, and Descriptive Representation” (Discussant: Hakeem Jefferson)
• Wei Zhong, “Fragmentation Dynamics in Electoral Assessments: Evolving Voter Criteria in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1984-2020” (Discussant: David A.M. Peterson)

Spring 2023 Schedule

February 1: White Racial Attitudes

• Geneva Cole, “White Identity and Support for Racially Inclusive Political Projects” (Discussant: Debbie Schildkraut)
• Emily West, “Cross-Partisan Discussion De-Polarizes White Americans’ Racial Policy Preferences” (Discussant: Diana Mutz)

February 15: Political Psychology

• Rongbo Jin, Do Americans hate people from the opposing party equally? (Discussant: Daniel Hopkins)
• Hillary Style, Impression Management and Expectations of Political Cynicism (Discussant: Christopher Johnston)

March 1: Race and Ethnicity Politics

• Suhwan (Shawn) Kim, “Under Threat We Unite: How Shared Marginalization Shapes Cohesion and Political Cooperation among Asian Americans”
• Michael Strawbridge, “In the Thick of It: Operationalizing the Relationship Between Black People, Black Spaces, and Black Political Unity”

March 22: Congress

• SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor, “Follow the leaders: Asymmetric party messaging in the U. S. Congress”
• Peter McLaughlin, “Priority Projects: Constituent Demand and the Electoral Benefits of Congressional Spending”

April 26: Gender and Politics

• Sierra David Thomander, “All Else Equal? Gendered Election Outcomes Along the Political Pipeline”
• Kayla Wolf, “Gender, Education and Partisanship: Trends in Party ID and Vote Choice over Time”

Fall 2022 Schedule

September 28: Following the Leaders: Elites Shaping Public Opinion

• Taegyoon Kim, “The Effects of Partisan Elites’ Violent Rhetoric on Support for Political Violence”
• Damon Roberts, “Changing Norms and Partisan Polarization: How Elites Advance Mass Polarization”

October 12: Experiments in REP

• Rachel Smilan-Goldstein, “’The Most Horrible Psycho-Sexual Fears’:  Testing the Jesse Jackson Hypothesis”
• Alexander Goodwin, “Protesting the ‘Right’ Way: Exploring Notions of Respectability and Support for Black Lives Matter”

October 26: Voting

• Klara Fredriksson, “Pre-trial Intervention and Political Participation: Evidence from Broward County”
• Marques Zarate, “Principled or Pragmatic: How Voting History and Issue Type Shape Perceptions of Pandering”

November 9: REP in Congress

• Elliot Mamet and Austin Bussing, “Empire of Liberty? Race, Empire, and Representation of the U.S. Territories in Congress”
• Kumar Ramanathan, “Constructing Racial Liberalism: The Divergent Trajectories of Fair Employment and Fair Housing, 1933-68”

November 30: Methodology Innovations in American Politics

• Yuki Atsusaka, “Causal Inference with Ranking Data: Application to Blame Attribution in Police Violence and Ballot Order Effects in Ranked-Choice Voting”
• Isaiah Raynal, “What Do Respondents Really Mean?: Using Mixed Data and Methods to Interpret Mixed Results”

Spring 2022 Schedule

Angst In American Politics: April 27, 2022 from 3:00PM-4:30PM ET

• Presenter: Christina Ladam, “How Likeminded Peers Influence our Views on Politics” (Discussant: Jaime Settle)
• Presenter: Seth Babson Warner, “Contentious Communities: Affective Polarization in US Towns and Cities” (Discussant: Liz Connors)

Identity and Politics: March 30, 2022 from 3:00PM-4:30PM ET

• Presenter: Marayana Martinez, “Does the Racial Composition of High Schools Affect Political Participation Among Students of Color”
• Presenter: Wesley Wehde, “At the Intersection of Transgender Attitudes, Identity Politics, and Vote Choice”

Citizen participation in government: February 23, 2022 from 3:00PM-4:30PM ET

• Presenter: Devin Judge-Lord, “The Environmental Justice Movement’s Impact on Bureaucratic Policymaking” (Discussant: Beth Leech)
• Presenter: Trevor Incerti, “Combatting capture in local politics: evidence from 8 field experiments” (Discussant: David Brookman)

Congress, broadly defined: January 26, 2022 from 3:00PM-4:30PM ET

• Presenter: Emily Cottle, “The Institution’s Knowledge: Congressional Staff Turnover and Committee Productivity” (Discussant: Alexander Furnas)
• Presenter: Mia Costa, “The Vicious Cycle of Affective Polarization and Negational Styles of Representation” (Discussant: Nathan Kalmoe)

Fall 2021 Schedule

American political development and race, ethnicity, and politics: October 13, 2021 from 3:00PM-4:30PM ET

• Presenter: Maye Henning, “The Empty Gift: Citizenship, Imperialism, and Political Development in Puerto Rico”
• Presenter: Taylor Mattia, “Resegregated Schools, Racial Attitudes, and Long-Run Partisanship: Evidence for White Backlash”

Everything is Terrible and We Are All Going to Die: October 27, 2021 from 3:00PM-4:30PM ET

• Presenter: Matt Motta, “How Right-Leaning Cable News Content Shaped COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy” (Discussant: Jon Green)
• Presenter: Rachel Porter, “Policy Facts or Partisan Friction?: Explaining Political Communication on America’s Opioid Epidemic” (Discussant: Benjamin Noble)

Immigration in America: November 10, 2021 from 3:00PM ET-4:30PM ET

• Presenter: Flavio Rogerio Hickel, “Kissing Up and Kicking Down: How Immigrant Resentment Impacts Latinx Support for Donald Trump and Restrictive Immigration Policies”
• Presenter: Jae Eun Kim, “Examining the Effects of Exclusion on Immigrant Assimilation Efforts during the Chinese Exclusion Era (1882-1943)”

Local Politics: December 1, 2021 from 3:00PM ET-4:30PM ET

• Presenter: Bryant Moy, “Responsiveness in the Patchwork of Local Government” (Discussant: Chris Warshaw)
• Presenter: Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, “Does Citizen Collaboration Impact Government Service Provision? Evidence from SeeClickFix Requests” (Discussant: Jessica Trounstine)

Spring 2021 Schedule

Misinformation and Misperception: February 17th from 2:00PM ET-3:30PM ET

• Presenter: Matt Graham, “Measuring Misperceptions?” (Discussant: Jennifer Jerit)
• Presenter: Ian Shapiro, “Misinformation and the Public” (Discussant: Joanne Miller)

Computational Text Analysis in American Politics: March 10, 2021 from 2:00PM ET-3:30PM ET.

• Presenter: Luca Bellodi, “Bureaucrats, Politicians, and the Strategic Use of Information” (Discussant: Mary Kroeger)
• Presenter: Huyen Nguyen, “The (great) Persuasion Divide? Gender Disparities in Debate Speeches & Evaluations” (Discussant: Sarah Shugars)

Accountability: March 24th from 2:00PM ET-3:30PM ET

• Presenter: Talbot Andrews, “The Road to Reelection is Paved with Good Intentions: Experiments on the Role of Outcomes and Intentions in Voting Behavior” (Discussant: Gabe Lenz)
• Presenter: Greg Sasso, “Policy Bundling and Costly Monitoring” (Discussant: Sean Gailmard)

Legislative Capacity: April 28th from 2:00PM ET-3:30PM ET

• Presenter: Rachel Porter, “Changing the Dialogue: Descriptive Candidacies & Position Taking in Campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives”
• Presenter: Srinivas Parinandi, “Social Returns to Legislative Capacity: Evidence from the Opioid Epidemic”

The Attitudes and Influence of Political Elites: May 19th from 2:00PM ET-3:30PM ET

• Presenter: Alexander (Zander) Furnas, “The People Think What I Think: False Consensus and Elite Misperception of Public Opinion”. (Discussant: Mia Costa)
• Presenter: Laura Moses, “Conceptualizing and Identifying Interest Actors”. (Discussant: Maggie Macdonald)

JAWS Professional Development Series 2021

This spring we will be holding several of professiomnal development panels in addition to our usual paper series. These will be held at ad-hoc times as speaker availability dictates.

Public Scholarship: February 26th from 3:00-4:00pm ET

• Panelist: Julia Azari (@julia_azari)
• Panelist: Hakeem Jefferson (@hakeemjefferson)
• Panelist: Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias)

Academic Book Publishing: Thursday March 25th 1:00-2:00pm ET

• Panelist: Charles Myers, University of Chicago Press
• Panelist: Nazita Lajevardi, Michigan State University

Academic Journal Publishing: Thursday April 27th 3:00-4:00pm ET

• Panelist: Beth Leech, Co-editor of Interest Groups & Advocacy
• Panelist: Neil Malhotra, Associate Editor, Journal of Politics (2019-2020)
• Panelist: Justin Kirkland, Co-editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly

Fall 2020 Schedule

Representation: September 30th

• Presenter: Anna Gunderson, “Descriptive Representation and Prosecutorial Discretion: Do Black and Female Prosecutors Prosecute Differently?” (Discussant: Kelsey Shoub)
• Presenter: Brian Hamel, “The Means Matter, Too: Policy and Economic Retrospective Voting in American National Elections” (Discussant: David Fortunato)
• Presenter: Jaclyn Kaslovsky, “Delegate Rhetoric in Congress: Measuring Representative Orientation with Text” (Discussant: Jeremy Gelman)
• Presenter: Zoe Nemerever, “Rural Representation Gaps in the American States” (Discussant: Justin de Benedictis-Kessner)

Ideology and Partisanship: October 14th

• Presenter: Jon Kingzette, “In-party Love and Out-party Hate” (Discussant: Jenny Wolak)
• Presenter: Chelsea Kaufman, “Ideological Constraint and Stability among Rural, Suburban, and Urban Americans” (Discussant: Yamil Velez)
• Presenter: Lucas de Abreu Maia, “Consequences of Ideology: affective, attitudinal and Behavioral effects of ideological identification in the United States” (Discussant: Victoria Shineman)
• Presenter: Baobao Zhang, “Americans’ perceptions of privacy and surveillance in the COVID-19 Pandemic” (Discussant: Anand Edward Sokhey)

Media Effects/Information Effects: October 28th

• Presenter: Elliott Ash, “Media slant is contagious” (Discussant: Eunji Kim)
• Presenter: Jon Green, “Belief Systems in Theory and Practice: Evidence from Political Pundits” (Discussant: Hans Noel)
• Presenter: Melissa Baker, “Dispositional Traits and Susceptibility to Political Anxiety” (Discussant: Steve Utych)
• Presenter: E.J. Fagan, “The development of partisan knowledge regimes in the United States” (Discussant: Mike Olson)

Identities in American Politics: November 11th

• Presenter: Rachel Bernhard, “The Silenced Text: Field Experiments on Gendered Experiences of Political Participation” (Discussant: Mirya Holman)
• Presenter: Rita Nassar, “Humanitarian Frames and Americans’ Attitudes toward Syrian Refugee Resettlement” (Discussant: Nazita Lajevardi)
• Presenter: Andrew Proctor, “The organizational and attitudinal roots of LGB political incorporation” (Discussant: Eric Hansen)
• Presenter: Jasmine Noelle Yarish, “Quilted Nationalism: Black Feminism, Abolition Democracy, & W.E.B. Du Bois’s COLOR & DEMOCRACY” (Discussant: Anna Daily)

Legislative Politics: December 2nd

• Presenter: Nicholas Howard, “Agenda Control and Amendment Targets: The US Senate” (Discussant: Molly Reynolds)
• Presenter: Michael Kistner, “Legislating or Electioneering? The Effect of Electoral Demands on Policy Productivity” (Discussant: Christian Fong)
• Presenter: Joshua Y. Lerner, “Setting the Committee Agenda: Measuring Speaker Influence in Congressional Hearings” (Discussant: Justin Grimmer)
• Presenter: Annelise Russell, “Tweeting Red: Angry Emotional Appeals in Congress” (Discussant: Kevin Munger)

Legislative and Executive Politics: December 16th

• Presenter: Geoff Lorenz, “Drawing Better Lawmakers: Redistricting Institutions and Legislative Performance” (Discussant: Michael Crespin)
• Presenter: Nico Napolio, “Executive Coalition Building” (Discussant: Alex Bolton)
• Presenter: Erinn Lauterbach, “From Descriptive to Policy Representation: Lawmaking in the U.S. House of Representatives” (Discussant: Christina Wolbrecht)
• Presenter: Leah Rosenstiel, “Congressional Bargaining and the Distribution of Grants” (Discussant: Christina Kinane)

Electoral Systems: January 13th

• Presenter: Jesse Clark, “Electoral System Change in the United States” (Discussant: Jason Roberts)
• Presenter: Karin Kitchens, “Understanding turnout at the local level using spatial data” (Discussant: Chinnu Parinandi)
• Presenter: Shiro Kuriwaki, “Ticket Splitting in a Nationalized Era” (Discussant: Barry Burden)
• Presenter: Victoria Shineman, “Voting in Ranked Choice Vote (RCV) Elections Improves Evaluations of RCV” (Discussant: Lee Drutman)