Quicklinks | Faculty
Rebecca U. Thorpe (Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2010) joined the faculty at the University of Washington as an Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2010. She was a Research Fellow at The Brookings Institution from 2008-2009 where she completed research for her dissertation project, “The Welfare-Warfare State.” During the 2009-2010 academic year she worked on Capitol Hill as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. Her research focuses on national political institutions, policymaking and American political development. Her current book project, The Warfare State: Perpetuating the U.S. Military Economy (University of Chicago Press, Forthcoming 2013), examines how a permanent U.S. military industry influences legislative preferences for defense spending and war, while expanding the president’s ability to exercise military force abroad. She has published articles on geographic biases in defense contracting and federal spending, and has conducted research on Congress, the president and the initiation and conduct of U.S. wars from the constitutional founding to the twenty-first century. She is also working on a project examining the history of U.S. incarceration and development of punitive crime policy. Thorpe teaches courses in American politics, public policy and American political development. Her classes include topics such as the presidency & the executive branch, the national security state, concentrated poverty, mass incarceration and inner-city schools. |
