Sean Diament

Sean Diament’s research and teaching interests broadly encompass the politics of poverty, political inequality (including class, race, gender, migration, and spatiotemporality), power and conflict, American political development (ideas and institutions), the U.S. Congress, the presidency, federalism, representation, statebuilding and public organization, policymaking and public policy (primarily social welfare), political geography, social epidemiology, multi-method research, and social science epistemological construction and pedagogy.

His dissertation and first book project entitled Dividing the Poor explores how poor people were virtually represented by largely non-poor lawmakers during the pathbreaking New Deal period in Congressional history. Understanding the varied conceptions of the poor through Congressional discourse sheds light on how lawmakers selectively incorporated some of the poor into the nascent welfare state while excluding others. This conscious division of the poor consequently restructured the American polity for generations, lifting some out of penury while entrenching the poverty conditions of others. Thus, the work showcases the conscious role of politics in the perpetuation of poverty in the United States.

A second manuscript-length project investigates the heretofore unexplained role of the U.S. Congress in legislating Jim Crow—a system of racial hierarchy through “separate but equal” segregation. Primary source research revealed scores of heretofore under-excavated Jim Crow laws in the period from 1860 to 1960. These laws fall into seven policy tracks spanning education policy in the District of Columbia, public land grants for state colleges, statehood admission, bathing pools in D.C., national defense employment, school lunches, and hospital construction. Overall, the project uncovers that racialized statebuilding through Jim Crow is a nuanced and conflicted story, simultaneously breaking through Solid South Democratic opposition to deliver needed benefits to African Americans in the South, while further entrenching structural racism within American political institutions and public policy provision on an even greater scale than previously understood.

Learn more about Professor Diament’s research and teaching here: https://seandiament.wordpress.com/