Andrea Y. Simpson, Ph. D.

Home

Curriculum Vitae

Contact Information

Syllabi

Weinstein Research Project

Andrea Simpson photo

Professor Simpson is a native of Memphis, Tennessee. After graduating from Rhodes College in 1976, she pursued a career in advertising, marketing, and public relations before entering graduate school at the University of Virginia in 1987. In 1989, she began the doctoral program in political science at Emory University, and in 1993 began her career as a professor at the University of Washington. Her first book, The Tie that Binds, was named the “Best Book of 1998 on Racial Identity” by the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics section of the American Political Science Association. Professor Simpson is a new faculty member here at the University of Richmond. She is currently completing a book on the women in the environmental justice movement to be published by Oxford University Press.

Professor Simpson dedicates her scholarly energies to research in areas of race, class, gender, and social movements. Her participation in the waning years of the Civil Rights Movement sparked her interest in ethnic politics. Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, a city with a complex and violent racial history further fueled these interests. As she developed a research agenda, she discovered the relationship between struggles for gender equity and the struggle for racial equality. Her work the politics of gender, in the context of the Environmental Justice movement, emerged simultaneously with her continuing study of ethnic and racial inequalities.

Professor Simpson spent 11 years at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, before coming to the University of Richmond. The transition from a research institution to a liberal arts setting has meant new opportunities for curriculum development and innovative teaching methods. During the 2005-2006 academic year, Professor Simpson will participate in the first Weinstein Family Fellow Research Project, along with Professors Kevin Kuswa and Paul Achter in Rhetoric and Communications, This project, entitled The Politics of Race, Space, and Place, will explore relationships between the political agency of groups and the spaces they occupy. In the Spring of 2006, all three professors will teach a seminar on this subject. Please visit the link at the bottom for more information on this project.

Information on Dr. Simpson's teaching and mentoring philosophies