Recent News
Media Bio & Personal Website
Taylor on Twitter
Education
Ph.D., Political Science, University of Washington (2015)
M.A., Political Science, University of Washington (2010)
B.A., Politics and International Relations, Scripps College (2006)
Research Areas
- Political Theory
- African American Political Thought
- American Political Development
- Race and American Politics
- Incarceration & Policing
- Public Law
Courses Taught
- POLS 4739: The Politics of Race
- POLS 4754/5754: Black Political Thought
- POLS 4751/5751: Critical Race Theory
Ohio University Affiliations
About Dr. Taylor
Kirstine Taylor is an Associate Professor in Political Science and the Center for Law, Justice & Culture. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Washington, where she was also the Postdoctoral Prize Fellow at the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality & Race.
Dr. Taylor's research has appeared in American Quarterly, Law & Society Review, Theory & Event, and Politics, Groups & Identities. Her book, Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State (University of Chicago Press, 2025), analyzes the origins of the mass incarceration in the post-WWII U.S. South.
At Ohio University, she teaches courses in American politics, public law, and political theory, including The Politics of Law, Politics of Race, and Black Political Thought.
Publications
Kirstine Taylor, Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
Kirstine Taylor, "Chapter 4: American Political Development in the Era of Black Lives Matter," in Nadia Brown, Ray Block, Jr., and Christopher Stout, eds., The Politics of Protest: Readings of the Black Lives Matter Movement (Routledge, 2021).
Kirstine Taylor, "Racial Capitalism and the Production of Racial Innocence," Theory & Event Vol. 24, No. 3 (July 2021): 702-729.
Kirstine Taylor, "Sunbelt Capitalism, Civil Rights, and the Development of Carceral Policy in North Carolina, 1954-1970," Studies in American Political Development Vol. 32, No. 2 (October 2018): 292-322.
Kirstine Taylor, "American Political Development and Black Lives Matter in the Age of Incarceration," Politics, Groups, and Identities Vol. 6, Issue 1 (2018): 153-161.
Michael McCann, George Lovell, and Kirstine Taylor, "Covering Legal Mobilization: A Bottom-Up Analysis of Wards Cove v. Atonio," Law & Social Inquiry Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter 2016): 91-99.
Kirstine Taylor, "Untimely Subjects: White Trash and the Making of Racial Innocence in the Postwar South," American Quarterly Vol. 61, No. 1 (March 2015): 55-80.