Professor Christopher Parker
Stuart A. Scheingold Professor of Social Justice and Political Science at the University of Washington
Chris Parker (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2001) is an associate professor, and Stuart A. Scheingold Professor of Social Justice and Political Science in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington.
The bulk of his research takes a behavioral approach to historical events. More specifically, he brings survey data to bear on questions of historical import. His first book, Fighting for Democracy: Black Veterans and the Struggle Against White Supremacy in the Postwar South (Princeton University Press, 2009), winner of APSA's Ralph J. Bunche Award, takes a fresh approach to the civil rights movement by gauging the extent to which black veterans contributed to social change.
A second book (under contract with Princeton University Press) Will the Real Americans Please Stand Up?: The Tea Party and Right-Wing Extremism in the United States (with Matt Barreto), explores the beliefs, attitudes, and behavior of the Tea Party.
A third book examines the ideological and sociological origins of what has come to be known as the urban crisis of the 1960s. In short, it examines the micro-foundations of the disturbances that swept America in the late 1960s.
A Robert Wood Johnson Scholar (2005-07), he has published in the Journal of Politics, International Security, Political Research Quarterly and the Du Bois Review. Parker is the principal investigator of the Multi-State Survey on Race and Politics, and the Director of the Center for Survey Research at the University of Washington.
We caught up with Christopher Parker during his visit to the US Studies Centre.
