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Education

PhD, University of Texas at Austin
MA, University of Toronto
BA, Colgate University

Bio

Kathleen S. Sullivan is Professor of Political Science, and affiliate faculty member at the Center for Law, Justice & Culture, at Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ University. Her research areas include American political development, public law, urban politics and history, and regulatory police powers, with attention to labor, race, and gender. With Patricia Strach, she is the author of The Politics of Trash (Cornell, 2022), winner of the Dennis Judd Best Book award from the Urban and Local Politics section of the American Political Science Association. She is also the author Constitutional Context: Women and Rights Discourse in Nineteenth-Century America (John Hopkins, 2007). She has published in journals including Studies in American Political Development, Journal of Policy History, New Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, and Social Science History. She has contributed to edited volumes, including Statebuilding from the Margins (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Race and American Political Development (Routledge, 2008), and Feminist Interpretations of Tocqueville (Penn State Press, 2009). Her current project—which originated at an NEH Summer Institute, The American Maritime People—is on the protection of seamen from treatment by sailors’ boardinghouses in the 19th century.

Research Areas

• American Political Development
• Public Law
• Urban Politics

Courses Taught

• POLS 2200 The Politics of Law
• POLS 4010 American Constitutional Law
• POLS 4015 Constitutional Politics
• POLS 3050J Writing in Political Science
• LJC 6800 Research Capstone in Law, Justice & Culture

Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ University Affiliations

Center for Law, Justice, & Culture

Theme: Making & Breaking the Law, Co-Organizer

Publications

Patricia Strach and Kathleen Sullivan. The Politics of Trash: How Municipal Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890-1920. Cornell University Press, 2022.

Kathleen S. Sullivan and Carol Nackenoff, "Federal Aid to Women and Children: The Children’s Bureau, the Social Security Act, and Political Development Victories and Failures," Studies in American Political Development 38, no. 2 (Fall 2024): 138-152

"234 Pages of Sworn Affidavits: Legalism Without Politics in the Attempt to Overthrow the 2020 Election." Special Issue: Constitution in Crisis. New Political Science 45, No. 2 (2023): 224-238.

"Sailors, Crimps, and Commerce: Laws Protecting Seamen, 1866-1884." Journal of Policy History 34 no. 4 (October 2022): 555-86.

Patricia Strach, Kathleen Sullivan, and Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués. "The Garbage Problem: Corruption, Capacity, and Access in Four American Cities, 1894-1940." Studies in American Political Development 33, no. 2 (October 2019): 209-233.

Presentations and Awards

Research and Teaching Awards

Winner of the Dennis Judd Best Book Award, with Patricia Strach, from the Urban and Local Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, 2024, for The Politics of Trash

Best Paper Award, with Patricia Strach and Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués. for best paper presented in the Urban and Local Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, at the 2015 Annual Meeting. 2016

Pi Sigma Alpha Award, with Patricia Strach, for the best paper presented at the 2007 meetings of the Western Political Science Association, 2008

Outstanding Tutor Award, Honors Tutorial College, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ University. 2022

Distinguished Mentor Award, Honors Tutorial College, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ University, 2006

Selected Presentations

with Patricia Strach. Author Talk: The Politics of Trash. Massachusetts Historical Society. May 8, 2023

with Patricia Strach. "The History of Garbage in Columbus." Presented to the Local History & Genealogy Division, Columbus Metropolitan Library. January 26, 2023

with Patricia Strach. "The Politics of Trash," with Joel Tirado. Policy Outsider podcast, The Rockefeller Institute. October 5, 2023

with Patricia Strach. "Talking About Trash." Podcast of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. January 17, 2023

with Patricia Strach. "What’s the Sordid History of U.S. Trash Collection?" Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness podcast. January 4, 2023