  |
        |
|
|
and DISSERTATION COMPLETION FELLOWSHIPS
NEXT APPLICATION DEADLINE:
The Center for American Political Studies welcomes applications for
Dissertation Research Fellowships and
Dissertation Research and Completion Fellowships will be awarded to run
from July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009. Each full-year fellowship
provides a $21,830 stipend. The student’s facilities fees for the
academic year are also paid by the Center for American Political
Studies. Applications must be submitted by 5 p.m. on Complete guidelines and instructions GSAS Standard Application Form for Dissertation Research or Completion Fellowships Info on dissertation fellowships offered by other Harvard centers supporting social science research
|
|
2007-2008 Dissertation Fellowship Recipients
Philip Jones (Government, G-4) Research Fellowship
Charles Loeffler (Sociology, G-4) Research Fellowship
Eric Lomazoff
(Government, G-5) Research Fellowship
Daniel Schlozman
(Social Policy-Government, G-5) Research Fellowship
Benjamin Waterhouse
(History, G-5) Research Fellowship
Ann Marie Wilson
(History, G-4) Research Fellowship
Philip Jones (Government, G-4) Research Fellowship
My dissertation focuses on a question central to evaluating the health of American democracy: how do constituents hold their representatives accountable? Using extensive and specially-commissioned survey data, I explore ordinary citizens' responses to congressional representation. My research advances several key debates in political science, from the role of parties and elite competition in holding representatives accountable to the difference the type of politicians and the ways they craft policy make for mass politics. I have already designed and implemented a major part of this research, and will defend my prospectus by the end of my G3 year this semester. Given that I do not plan to take on any teaching responsibilities, funding from the Center next year will lead to a finished dissertation.
Charles Loeffler (Sociology, G-4) Research Fellowship My dissertation project analyzes the results of three natural experiments in the criminal justice system to produce the first unbiased estimates of the effects of imprisonment on the subsequent criminal behavior of prisoners. To address issues of endogeneity, my dissertation will use several innovative strategies to uncover the causal effects of imprisonment on criminal behavior and the causal mechanisms through which these effects operate. A CAPS dissertation research award will allow me to complete my data collection in research sites across the country (Illinois and Massachusetts), analyze the results, and begin the process of writing the dissertation itself freed from any teaching obligations. Since each dataset is massive and based on non-research data, extensive data cleaning is required. In addition, some of the data can only be analyzed at the research site, making it critical that I be able to routinely travel to the research site in the coming year.
Eric Lomazoff
(Government, G-5) Research Fellowship My doctoral research traces the development of the Bank of the United States within the early American republic, with particular attention to how and why both popular and elite conceptions of the institution shifted over time. I hypothesize that changes in the organization of the Bank and the scope of its operations, coupled with emerging ideas about the institution's capacity to influence nationwide economic activity, led to conceptions of the Bank that increasingly emphasized its regulatory function with respect to monetary supply. CAPS funding for the 2007-2008 academic term will offer me the necessary time and resources to both gather additional primary data and test the principle hypothesis emerging from that theory.
Daniel Schlozman
(Social Policy-Government, G-5) Research Fellowship My dissertation, which is entitled "The Making of Partisan Majorities: Parties; Anchoring Groups; and Electoral Coalitions," asks why political parties and potential anchoring interest groups integrate, and with what effect. Although also examining cases of failed integration, it principally compares the movements that shaped the dominant parties of the last seven decades. The New Deal Democrats and today's Republicans each derived a sizable – although by no means complete – proportion of its electoral base and ideological strength from the anchoring groups with whom they joined: respectively, the labor movement (especially the CIO), and evangelical Christians. Both groups moved from the fringes of party politics to become the major organizational players inside majority coalitions, with important consequences for public policy and the shape of the party coalitions. Next year will be year five of six in graduate school for me. Having mapped out the broad intellectual terrain and done most of the grunt work in documenting party-group networks, support from CAPS will help me to exploit the dataset that I have created, both through formal network analysis and by exploring the ways that elites' experiences and associations remain with them – a theme that resonates beyond these particular cases. In addition, most of the projects outlined above about the effects of integration remain to be done.
Benjamin Waterhouse
(History, G-5) Research Fellowship My research examines efforts by the leaders of major American firms and business associations to promote a business-friendly policy agenda in both Washington and in national public discourse. I draw on the records of major business associations to analyze their public relations strategies and show the evolution of economic ideas the public heard. My primary corporate sources are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and, by special permission, the Business Roundtable. To establish the link between business mobilization and conservative politics, I use the presidential papers of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush. During the 2007-2008 academic year, if awarded the CAPS fellowship, I will conclude my research at the Hagley Museum and Library in Delaware, which houses the archives of the NAM and the Chamber of Commerce, as well as records of important business leaders connected to du Pond. In addition, I will conduct essential research in the Presidential libraries of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, tracing the influence of corporate leaders in the Republican-controlled White House and investigating in particular divisions between business leaders and conservative politicians over issues of taxes and budget deficits. Finally, I will use the resources at Harvard, particularly corporate records at Baker Library, as well as published public opinion data, to round out my research.
Ann Marie Wilson
(History, G-4) Research Fellowship My dissertation, "Taking Liberties Abroad: Americans and International Humanitarianism, 1880-1920," is an investigation into the origins of modern American human rights activism. I ask how the traditions of mid-nineteenth-century Christian missionary and anti-slavery movements—once the leading edge of international humanitarianism—helped shape the development of modern American human rights agendas at a time when the United States was beginning to step into its role as world power. My goals are to explain the relationship between turn-of-the-century American expansionism and the concurrent efflorescence of public concern about distant human rights abuses, and to uncover and evaluate the role of grassroots activists in shaping U.S. foreign policy around humanitarian concern. I hope that my research will be of interest to scholars contemplating contemporary questions about the challenges of humanitarian intervention and the role of the United States in the world. A research fellowship from the Center for American Political Studies will free me from teaching responsibilities and allow me to travel to several distant archives, including the Robert Park papers at the University of Chicago, the Mark Twain papers at UC Berkeley, the William H. Sheppard papers at Hampton University, and the Jane Addams papers at the Swarthmore Peace Collection. With support for uninterrupted research, I will be able to complete the project in a timely fashion, embarking on the writing phase during the summer between my fourth and fifth years.
|
|
Peter Benson
(Anthropology, G-5) Completion Fellowship My dissertation in Social Anthropology is an ethnographic study of the local moral world of tobacco farming and an historical study of how it developed since the Civil War. I focus on how citizenship has been culturally defined on tobacco farms as the relationship between farmers, the state, and the tobacco industry has changed over time. I look at how the historical meaning of citizenship is today being challenged vis-à-vis the globalization of tobacco leaf, the collapse of the subsidy program, dependency on Mexican migrant farm workers, and the anti-tobacco zeitgeist. This is one of the most comprehensive and detailed studies of farming and migrant labor undertaken in the American South. It is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival work in Wilson, North Carolina, the historical hub of flue-cured tobacco. My project converges with the aims of the Center and I am excited about the possibility of actively participating at the Center in the upcoming year. Not only will the fellowship go a long way toward enhancing the quality of my dissertation on citizenship in the American South, I will also be able to contribute an anthropological standpoint to the Center’s multidisciplinary coverage of American politics. My dissertation research is timely, compelling, and makes important contributions to key bodies of literature in American political studies and history. Angus Burgin
(History, G-3) Research Fellowship I am in the early stages of a dissertation on the intellectual origins of American conservative political thought, focusing on the integration of free-market economic ideas and social traditionalism among a subset of transatlantic intellectuals in the period following the Second World War This project will aim to collapse traditional boundaries – between both academic disciplines and discrete national histories – in order to develop a rich contextual understanding of the intellectual grounding of the modern conservative worldview. This enterprise requires extensive research at a range of archives across the United States as well as several European repositories. This fellowship from the Center for American Political Studies will enable me to devote a full academic year – with no teaching commitments – to research at these locations and the preliminary development of several dissertation chapters. With a year-long fellowship to free me from day-to-day responsibilities at the university, I will be able to undertake this project with the broad international and interdisciplinary reach that I believe a sophisticated treatment of the intellectual history of modern American conservatism requires. Colin Moore
(Government, G-4) Research Fellowship In the modern era, there exists no major state where control over foreign relations is more divided between legislative and executive institutions than the United States. The president may be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but only Congress can declare war. The president may pursue his own foreign policy goals, but Congress must provide funding to achieve them. Nowhere is this inter-institutional struggle more evident than in the acquisition and governing of foreign territories and dependent peoples. Between the end of the Civil War and WWI, the United States – through both formal and informal means – was directly responsible for the management of twelve noncontiguous territories, as well as the “care” of American Indians and freed blacks. Some governing arrangements were more favorable to executive dominance, while others were more amenable to congressional dominance. In addition, some territorial governments required the development of large, invasive bureaucracies, while others relied on public-private partnerships. My dissertation will examine the politics of institutional choice in American territorial governance by exploring the following questions: (1) What explains the unique governing arrangements for each territory? (2) What are the different political mechanisms through which certain constellations of authority are chosen? (3) To what extent can foreign policy actions be explained through domestic politics? (4) To what extent do time and sequencing factors play a role in the availability of certain governing arrangements? Is it the case that arrangements available at an earlier time are closed at later times? This CAPS research fellowship will allow me the freedom to continue to develop my historical case studies, and to begin research into congressional debates, the presidential papers of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft, and the records of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, Indian Affairs, and the Department of State at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The fellowship will also allow me the time to begin gathering quantitative data to build an original dataset on expenditures for colonial administration across the cases.
|
|
2005-2006 Dissertation Fellowship Recipients
Leah Platt Boustan (Economics, G-4)
Cybelle Fox (Sociology & Social Policy, G-5)
Dan Hopkins (Government, G-3)
Leah Platt Boustan (Economics, G-4)
Cybelle Fox (Sociology & Social Policy, G-5)
Dan Hopkins (Government, G-3)
Hopkins' research will combine longitudinal data analysis with contemporary survey data and four case studies of U.S. cities to identify the mechanisms that connect diversity and public investment. Chief mechanisms to be considered include the potentially distinctive institutions, coalitions, social networks, norms, attitudes, economic conditions, and political activism that characterize diverse communities. One potential contribution relates to this project’s emphasis on dynamic processes: whereas past work has focused on contemporary, cross sectional relationships, this dissertation will explore how diversity’s impact has shaped policy choices and their antecedents across recent debates.
|
Peter Benson (Anthropology, G-5) Completion Fellowship 
Angus Burgin
(History, G-3) Research Fellowship 
Colin Moore
(Government, G-4) Research Fellowship 
Boustan traces two historical housing market processes that fostered the
development of this spatial arrangement: centralized racism, or
organized exclusionary activity of blacks from white areas, and
decentralized racism, by which white households outbid blacks for units
in all-white neighborhoods. In particular, she proposes a new source of
high frequency data on housing vacancies, which can be used to test the
extent to which black housing options were restricted by the color line.
In addition, she introduces a novel approach to assess the market value
of the racial uniformity of a suburban jurisdiction.
Fox will bring together the Latino immigration and welfare state
literature to examine the ways in which Latino-Anglo and
immigrant-native relations have shaped the politics of welfare in the
United States. Relying primarily on historical archives, public opinion
surveys, newspapers, court cases, federal, state and local legislation
as well as government reports, this dissertation will analyze public
attitudes and elite discourse surrounding the incorporation and
exclusion of Latinos and immigrants from means-tested cash assistance
programs. It will focus primarily on two important moments in the
history of the American welfare state: the transition from Mothers’
Pensions to Aid to Dependent Children (roughly 1920-1940) and the
transition from Aid to Families with Dependent Children to Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families (roughly 1990-2000). Such an approach will
allow her to contribute to at least five literatures or theoretical
debates in the fields of sociology and political science.