Dara Strolovitch

Dara Z. Strolovitch is Professor of Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Political Science at Yale University, where her research and teaching focus on political representation, social movements, and the intersecting politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality.  She received her B.A. in Political Science from Vassar College and her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale.  Before joining the Yale faculty, she was Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University, where she also held appointments in African American Studies and the Department of Politics.

She is the author of Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class, and Gender in Interest Group Politics, which examined how organizations that represent marginalized groups advocate on behalf of their intersectionally marginalized constituents.  Affirmative Advocacy received the American Political Science Association’s Gladys Kammerer Award for the best book on U.S. national policy, the Leon Epstein Award for the best book on Political Organizations and Parties, the American Sociological Association’s Race, Gender, and Class section’s Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award, and the Association for Research on Nonprofits and Voluntary Action’s Virginia Hodgkinson Prize.  She is also Associate Editor (with Burdett Loomis and Peter Francia) of the CQ Guide to Interest Groups and Lobbying.  Her work also appears in several edited volumes, as well as in journals including the Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, the American Journal of Sociology, the National Women’s Studies Association Journal, Social Science Quarterly, American Behavioral Scientist, Politics & Gender, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, PS: Political Science & Politics, the Du Bois Review, Health Affairs, and Politics, Groups, & Identities.

Strolovitch’s second book, When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People: Race, Gender, and What Makes a Crisis in America, examines the relationship between episodic hard times and the kinds of ongoing and quotidian hard times that structure the lived experiences of marginalized groups.  It does so by unpacking the taken-for-granted political vernacular of crisis, in part through an exploration of the raced and gendered politics of credit, debt, subprime lending, and housing foreclosures.

Her work has been supported by grants and fellowship from sources including the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Aspen Institute, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Brookings Institution, Georgetown University, the Russell Sage Foundation, the World Health Organization, and Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.  She received the 2018 Outstanding Career Award from the Midwest Political Science Association Women’s Caucus and is co-recipient of the National Women’s Caucus for Political Science’s Mansbridge Award, given “to extraordinary individuals who perform service above and beyond the call of duty…to advance opportunities for women.” She is currently co-editor of the American Political Science Review.  She also serves currently as Director of Graduate Studies in Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and, with Allison Harris, as co-director of the Center for the Study of Inequality at Yale’s Institution for Social & Policy Studies.

Books and Edited Volumes

Select Articles

“Identifying and Exploring Bias in Public Opinion on Scarce Resource Allocation During the COVID-19 Pandemic.”  With Ari Ne’eman, Elizabeth Bell, Monica C. Schneider, and Dara Strolovitch. 2022. Health Affairs 41: 1513-22.

“Mentoring and Marginalization.” With Samantha Majic. 2020. PS: Political Science & Politics 53: 763-69.

“Marginalized yet Mobilized: Race, Sexuality, and the Role of ‘Political Hypervigilance’ in the Political Participation of LGBT African Americans.”  With Alecia J. McGregor, Molly Higgins-Biddle, Laura Bogart, Dara Z. Strolovitch, and Bisola Ojikutu.  2019.  Du Bois Review 16:131-15.

“Who Represents Me? Race, Gender, Partisan Congruence and Representational Alternatives in a Polarized America.”  With Ashley English and Kathryn Pearson.  2019.  Political Research Quarterly 72: 785-804.

“Respectability, Anti-Respectability, and Intersectionally-Responsible Representation.” With Chaya Crowder.  2018.   PS: Political Science & Politics 51:340-44.

“A Possessive Investment in White Heteropatriarchy?  The 2016 Election and the Politics of Gender & Sexuality.”  With Janelle Wong and Andrew Proctor.  2017.  In Politics, Groups, & Identities 5:353-63.

“Gender Attitudes, Gendered Partisanship.” With Elizabeth Sharrow, Michael Heaney, Joanne Miller, and Seth Masket.  2016.  Journal of Women, Politics & Policy 36: 394-416.

“Naming Rites for Naming Wrongs: What We Talk about When We Talk About Woodrow Wilson.”  With Chaya Crowder.  2016.  Perspectives on Politics 14: 770-6.

“Invisible Ink: Intersectionality and Political Inquiry.” 2013. Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality 1: 100-13.

“Of Mancessions and Hecoveries: Race, Gender, and the Political Construction of Economic Crisis and Recovery.”  Perspectives on Politics 11(2013):167-76.

“Polarized Networks: The Organizational Affiliations of National Party Convention Delegates.” With Michael T. Heaney, Seth Masket, and Joanne Miller.  American Behavioral Scientist 56 (2012): 1654-76.

“Intersectionality in Time: Sexuality and the Shifting Boundaries of Intersectional Marginalization.”  Politics & Gender 8 (2012): 386-96. 

“Do Interest Groups Represent the Disadvantaged? Advocacy at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender.” Journal of Politics 68 (2006): 893-908.

“New Orleans is not the Exception.” With Paul Frymer and Dorian Warren. 2006. Du Bois Review 3 (2006): 37-57.

“Measuring Gay Population Density and the Incidence of Anti-Gay Hate Crime.” With Donald P. Green, Robert Bailey, Dara Z. Strolovitch, and Janelle S. Wong. Social Science Quarterly 82 (2001): 281-96.

“Defended Neighborhoods, Integration, and Racially Motivated Crime.”  With Donald P. Green, and Janelle S. Wong.  American Journal of Sociology 104 (1998): 372-403.

“Playing Favorites: Public Attitudes toward Race- and Gender-Targeted Anti-discrimination Policy.” National Women’s Studies Association Journal 10 (1998):27-53.

Selected Chapters in Edited Volumes

“When Does a Crisis Begin? Race, Gender, and the Foreclosure Non-Crisis of the 1990s.”  2021. In Critical Disaster Studies, Andy Horowitz and Jacob Remes, eds.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

“Racial Justice Advocacy, Political Representation, and the Contemporary Interest Group Universe.”  With M. David Forrest. 2016. In David Leal, Mark Sawyer, and Taeku Lee, eds., Oxford Handbook of Racial and Ethnic Politics in the United States.  New York: Oxford University Press. 

“Interest Groups and American Political Development.”  With Daniel Tichenor.  In Robert Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, and Richard Valelly, eds., Oxford Handbook of American Political Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 

“The Missing Women of The Wire.” With Naomi Murakawa.  In Shirin Deylami and Jonathon Havercroft, eds., The Politics of HBO’s The Wire: Everything Is Connected (NY: Routledge, 2015).

“What the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Illuminate about Bystander Publics as Proto-Players.”  With Hahrie Han.  In Jan Duyvendak and James Jasper, eds. Players and Arenas (Amsterdam University Press, 2015).

“Advocacy in Hard Times.” In Nonprofits and Advocacy. Steven Smith, Yutaka Tsujinaka, & Robert Pekkanen, eds. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2014).

“Inequality and Interest Group Representation.”  In Matthew Grossman, ed., New Directions in Interest Group Politics (New York: Routledge, 2013).

“Gender and Civil Society Organizations.” With Erica Townsend-Bell. In Weldon, Laurel, Georgina Waylen, Karen Celis and Johanna Kantola, eds., Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

“Interest Groups and Social Movements.”  With M. David Forrest.  2011.  In Burdett Loomis, Peter Francia, and Dara Z. Strolovitch, eds., CQ Guide to Interest Groups and Lobbying.  CQ Press, Washington, DC.

“Social and Economic Justice Advocacy.” With M. David Forrest. 2010. In L. Sandy Maisel and Jeffrey Berry, eds., Oxford Handbook of American Political Parties and Interest Groups.  New York: Oxford University Press.