天美传媒

An assistant professor in the Department of Politics at Ithaca College鈥檚 School of Humanities and Sciences, Figueroa can discuss U.S. political issues, including presidential leadership, racial, religious and working class politics, U.S.-Puerto Rico policy, and immigration/border politics.

Figueroa鈥檚 academic research focuses on American political development; race, religion and citizenship; Black American politics and political thought; Latino politics and border studies; public leadership; and U.S. Quakers. He is currently finishing a book on Quakers, race and U.S. Empire. His research also focuses on Bayard Rustin, a Black, gay, Quaker labor and civil rights activist of the 1940s through 1980s. He is also working on a project about the everyday 鈥渓ived experiences鈥� of people who study and/or work near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Marie Griffith, the John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, is currently the director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and the editor of the Center鈥檚 journal, Religion & Politics. Griffith is a frequent media commentator and public speaker on current issues pertaining to religion and politics, including the changing profile of American evangelicals and ongoing conflicts over gender, sexuality and marriage.

Dr. Jocelyn Evans, professor of government and interim director of the UWF Kugelman Honors Program, has taught American government, legislative behavior, women and politics, religion and politics, parties and interest groups, elections, constitutional law, political theory and research methods. Currently, Evans teaches first-year students in the Kugelman Honors Program how to be leaders through service in their community. Her core seminar is an intensive interdisciplinary course that incorporates undergraduate research under the guidance of faculty mentors across campus. Students build data literacy skills, practice academic writing, and present the results of their hard work at the annual UWF Student Scholar Symposium.

She has published several books and scholarly articles that explore congressional behavior, political culture and political science education. Evans, who was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in Washington, D.C., during the 9/11 and anthrax attacks in 2001, wrote 鈥淥ne Nation Under Siege: Congress, Terrorism, and the Fate of American Democracy,鈥� a book that documents how terrorism impacted the culture on Capitol Hill. She is co-author of 鈥淐entral Ideas in American Government,鈥� a best-selling interactive webtext, now in its eleventh edition, that helps students learn critical introductory concepts of American government and politics. She also wrote 鈥淲omen, Partisanship, and the Congress,鈥� a book that examines the differences between Republican and Democratic political cultures and how they affect women members of Congress. Her book with Dr. Jessica Hayden, "Congressional Communication in the Digital Age," focuses on how technology has shaped communication between members of Congress and their constituents. And her most recent work published by OU Press and co-authored with Dr. Keith Gaddie, "The U.S. Supreme Court's Democratic Spaces," traces the evolution of the Court across time and space and explores the social meaning of Cass Gilbert's iconic temple design for the permanent home of the institution. 

Evans, who was the chair of the Department of Government at UWF from 2012 to 2014, is on the editorial board of the academic journal, Perspectives on Political Science, and has served on the councils of political science associations, such as the Southwest Political Science Association, the Florida Political Science Association, and the American Political Science Association鈥檚 Women鈥檚 Caucus 鈥� South.

She received a bachelor鈥檚 degree in interdisciplinary studies from Berry College, and master鈥檚 and doctorate degrees in political science from the University of Oklahoma, where she received the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center Graduate Fellowship.

Originally from Philadelphia, Marty Cohen attended Tufts University and the Pennsylvania State University getting his B.A. degree in Political Science from Penn State. He then received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles in 2005.
Marty’s research interests are varied. His main focus is on the growing electoral influence of the religious right in the Republican Party. He is also interested in political parties and is a co-author of The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2008. He is also co-author of the 2011 Perspectives on Politics article “A Theory of Parties” which won the Jack Walker Award for its outstanding contribution to research on political organizations and parties.
Marty regularly teaches classes on religion and politics, as well as the introductory American government course and a class on interest groups and public policy. He also has more than a passing interest in the politics of the 1960s.

David C. Kirkpatrick (PhD, University of Edinburgh) has written or co-edited multiple books that explore intersections of politics, religion, and social movements—with the University of Pennsylvania Press (2019), Rutgers University Press (2022) and his current book project with Oxford University Press (expected in 2023). This book, Blood and Borders, explores how stories and images of violence shaped voting constituencies and participation in the U.S. public square. He has also produced leading research with scholars from around the world—at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies in Germany, funded by the German government (UNC Press, 2022), at Dartmouth College funded by the Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), and at Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Kirkpatrick’s research speaks to the increasing diversity of the U.S. voting public, how religion impacts political discourse and engagement, as well as the diversity and importance of Latino communities in the United States.