The Johns Hopkins Racial Politics Summer School (June 2-June 6 2025)
The formal study of the relationship between the state and the market has long drawn the attention of scholars for intellectual and political reasons. How do government institutions shape labor power? How are markets themselves constructed and contested through political action? How do these dynamics then fold back upon government? How should they? What frameworks do communities use to imagine alternatives? What’s garnered less attention is the central role racial politics plays in these dynamics. These questions take on heightened importance in the wake of the beginning of the second Trump presidency. We think this presents an opportunity.
Since 2022 as part of our broad attempt to remake the discipline by integrating the study of race and racism, the Johns Hopkins University Department of Political Science has held a summer school designed to bring together graduate students as well as junior and senior scholars. The summer school has three broad purposes–to teach graduate students the constitutive role race and racism plays in the development of the discipline, to develop a broad cross-institutional network of scholars committed to reimagining the discipline, and to give students an opportunity to present their work.
Our previous summer schools have taken the subfield structure of American Political Science as the base, with workshops devoted to American Politics, International Relations, Political Theory, and Comparative Politics respectively. The 2025 Summer School will take a different approach, and will focus on one subject: political economy. We choose political economy both because of its heightened importance intellectually and politically, and because we feel that the study of race and racism can shed light on pressing questions as well as develop new lines of inquiry that can both expand what we know and aid our broad commitment to improve the capacity of populations to self-govern.
We invite you to join us for the 2025 Johns Hopkins Racial Politics Summer School, held June 2–6, 2025 at Johns Hopkins University. Tuition is fully covered by Hopkins. Attendees are responsible for travel costs, but housing support is available. Please share this opportunity with your networks.
Applications are due March 28, 2025. Applicants to be admitted in order of registration until capacity has been reached. A waitlist will be in effect until May 1, 2025.
Please contact T Smith (lsmit286@jhu.edu) if you have further questions.
The Johns Hopkins Racial Politics Summer School is co-sponsored by the Agora Institute, the Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, and the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University.