Description:

Richard M. Valelly is Claude C. Smith '14 Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College, where he has taught since Fall, 1993.  He is the author of American Politics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013), The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement (University of Chicago Press, 2004), and Radicalism in the States: The American Political Economy and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party (University of Chicago Press, 1989). In 2009 he published Princeton Readings in American Politics. His current research focuses on the political development of LGBT rights in the U.S. from the Lavender Scare of the 1950s through the aftermath of DADT's repeal.

He will be presenting a paper titled, "Building A New Heterosexual State: The Cold War Governmentalization of Sexual Orientation"