AFST Welcomes New Dept. Chair

Department of Africana Studies,

 Tyson King-Meadows, Ph.D.

Beginning Fall 2013

Dr. Tyson D. King-Meadows is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). He is also an affiliate of the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (MIPAR), an affiliate of the Department of Public Policy, and a Faculty Fellow of the Honors College. He received a B.A. in Political Science from North Carolina Central University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His primary research interests concern African American political behavior and attitudes, identity politics, race and representation, Congress, and elections. His other research interests involve democratization and public attitudes toward democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. King-Meadows has been involved in numerous community service and engagement, professional development, and academic enrichment initiatives, ranging from the Shriver Center Advisory Board, the President’s Commission for Women, and the McNair Scholars Program to the Honors College Advisory Board, the URCAD Committee, and the CAHSS Black Faculty Committee. Dr. King-Meadows has received a number of teaching, service, and research awards, including a fellowship to the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African American Research at Harvard University, a Fulbright Scholar Award to Ghana, West Africa, a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for a residency at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University, a residency as a Visiting Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Africana Studies, a grant from the National Science Foundation, and an American Political Science Association (APSA) Congressional Fellowship. He has also served as an Alumni Ambassador of the Fulbright Scholar Program. Dr. King-Meadows is active in the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA). He has served as president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) [from 2011 – 2013] and currently serves as its treasurer. Dr. King-Meadows is particularly interested in exploring the impact of black political engagement, civil rights law, identity group politics, and racial representation on the black socioeconomic condition from the latter twentieth century to present day. For example, see the recently released book When the Letter Betrays the Spirit: Voting Rights Enforcement and African American Participation from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama (Lexington Books, 2011). This book draws from government data, legislative history, Supreme Court decisions, survey results, and the 2006 reauthorization debate to examine how executive and judicial discretion facilitates violations of the Voting Rights Act. While challenging the executive-centered model of leadership on voting rights, this book puts forth a Congress-centered leadership model that would satisfy the goals of the black civil rights movement and give fuller support to the Fifteenth Amendment. His next book (forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press) examines contemporary racial identity politics and the senatorial and gubernatorial candidacies of black federal representatives. Dr. King-Meadows’ next book length project examines the dynamics of racial group identity politics in the public and congressional response to the 2009 nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Dr. King-Meadows is also co-author with Thomas F. Schaller of Devolution and Black State Legislators: Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-first Century (State University of New York Press, 2006).