I am a Professor of Political Science and the C. Robert and Margaret Hanley Family Director of the Washington Program at the University of Notre Dame, where I teach and write about American politics, political parties, gender and politics, and American political development. My new book with David E. Campbell, See Jane Run: How Women Politicians Matter for Young People (Chicago 2025), examines the impact of women candidates on the beliefs and behaviors of American adolescents. In another on-going project, Mirya Holman, Lakshmi Iyer, and I are investigating women’s representation in local politics in the US.

Much of my work focuses on the consequences of women’s suffrage. I am currently working on the impact of suffrage on women’s access to local governance (with Holman and Iyer) and on state legislative politics (with Holman and Michael P. Olson). My earlier work with J. Kevin Corder on the impact of women voters on American elections produced two books: A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections since Suffrage (Cambridge 2020) and Counting Women’s Ballots: Female Voters from Suffrage Through the New Deal (Cambridge 2016). Both books received the APSA’s Victoria Schuck Award for the best book on women and politics. You can find more about our work on women voters, as well as essays, interviews, and reviews, here.

My first book, The Politics of Women’s Rights (Princeton 2000), describes and explains the polarization of the major American parties on women’s rights issues, such as abortion and the ERA, in the mid- to late-20th century. I have published articles on topics including party change and women’s representation in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and Political Behavior, among others.

I teach undergraduate courses on American government, political parties, and gender, politics, & power. For the latter, you can find my collected Moments of Gender here.