Gwendoline Alphonso is Associate Professor, Fairfield University, where she teaches in the Department of Politics and in the interdisciplinary programs of American Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is the author of Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Values and Economics (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and has published in numerous academic journals, including Studies in American Political Development, Columbia Journal of Race and Law, Polity, Journal of Policy History, and Perspectives in Politics, as well as several edited scholarly volumes. She is the recipient of the Walter Dean Burnham Best Dissertation Prize in Politics and History (2011) and the Ellis Hawley Prize for her article in the Journal of Policy History (2016). She holds a PhD from Cornell University, JSD (Doctor of Juridical Science) from Cornell Law School, and BCL (Bachelor of Civil Laws) from Oxford University, UK. Her current book project is entitled, “Ties that Bind: Slavery, Family, and American Political Development.”
