Beth ReingoldProfessor

Beth Reingold is Professor of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. She earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley and her BA in Political Science and History from Rice University. Her work engages questions about the complex relationships between gender, race/ethnicity, and political representation, primarily in and around legislative institutions in the U.S. states. Her most recent book, Race, Gender, and Political Representation: Toward a More Intersectional Approach, is co-authored with Kerry Haynie (Duke University) and Kirsten Widner (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) and won the 2021 Richard Fenno, Jr. Prize for the best book in Legislative Studies. It examines how gender and race interact to affect the election, behavior, and impact of individual state legislators and demonstrates how intersectionality, as a critical epistemology, compels us to re-evaluate the entire study of gender, race, and representation. Prof. Reingold’s current research focuses more intently on questions about legislative power and influence. It seeks to understand whether and how members of marginalized groups attain institutional power and how the institutions, norms, and processes that effect legislative power are themselves raced and/or gendered. With Irene Browne (Emory University, Department of Sociology), she is also working on an NSF-funded project on Black elites and the politics of immigration in the American states.