Race and the Making of American Political Science

American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law

By: Jessica Blatt

Narrated by: Rosemary Benson

From the late 19th century through the 1930s, scholars of politics defined and continually reoriented their field in response to the political imperatives of the racial order at home and abroad as well to as the vagaries of race science.

The Gilded Age scholars who founded the first university departments and journals located sovereignty and legitimacy in a "Teutonic germ" of liberty planted in the new world by Anglo-Saxon settlers and almost extinguished in the conflict over slavery. Within a generation, "Teutonism" would come to seem like philosophical speculation, but well into the 20th century, major political scientists understood racial difference to be a fundamental shaper of political life. They wove popular and scientific ideas about race into their accounts of political belonging, of progress and change, of proper hierarchy, and of democracy and its warrants. In doing so, they constructed models of human difference and political life that still exert a powerful hold on our political imagination today, in and outside of the academy.

By tracing this history, Jessica Blatt effects a bold reinterpretation of the origins of US political science, one that embeds that history in larger processes of the coproduction of racial ideas, racial oppression, and political knowledge.

The book is published by University of Pennsylvania Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2018 University of Pennsylvania Press (P)2020 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"One of those rare books that makes an important scholarly contribution...." (Adolph Reed, Jr., University of Pennsylvania)

"A masterful account of the illiberal fiber inherent in American political reality." (Duana Fullwiley, Stanford University)

"A pioneering work exploding with insights and discoveries on every page...." (Corey Robin, Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center)