I kind of fell into the study of legislative politics. I loved the study of institutions and rules—how knowing how the rules work helps protect people already in power but also could present opportunities to transform political spaces. I dipped my toe into studying public policy under Randall Ripley and into parties under Paul Beck, but it seems that I always came back to legislative studies. My first legislative politics courses were with Samuel Patterson. He was well known for the study of comparative legislatures. In a course that I took with him, I floated the argument in a paper that there might be some democratic tenets in single-party legislatures with an examination of Ghana and Japan. I did fine on the paper, but the feedback that I received was mostly dismissive. Now, years later, I can see that there were major flaws and lots of naiveté in my argument but, at the time, I mostly just felt dismissed and out of place.

The papers that were applauded were those that addressed fairly simple questions using existing data and showcasing simple quantitative models (we were first-year graduate students, after all). I did not find them to be especially interesting or inspiring. What they did well was demonstrate that the students, almost all uniformly male, knew the currency of the subfield and could deliver it. One thing that I remember vividly was being told that there were no “real” political scientists in Africa. Now, I had studied African politics as an undergraduate. My undergraduate advisor, Dr. Dwight Mullen, had been a Ford Fellow in Ghana right after the Ghanaian independence movement. There was real politics in Ghana and individuals who were studying Ghanaian politics beyond the perspectives of Europeans and colonialism. After the graduate course in which my ideas seemed dismissed, I felt that maybe political science was not really for me.

As a Black woman from a small North Carolina town, I had been on the fence about attending graduate school in the first place. I won a Women’s Research and Education Institute fellowship to work on Capitol Hill for a year and was placed in the office of Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA). That experience changed my entire trajectory. When I returned to graduate school, I had a kernel of an idea for a new and novel research project. I was clearer about the questions that mattered to me. In addition to continuing to learn from Dr. Patterson, I worked with amazing scholars, including William E. Nelson, Jr., Katherine Tate, Herb Weisberg, and the person who eventually became my dissertation advisor, Janet Box-Steffensmeier. Also, by the time I returned, the number of students of color in the graduate program had more than tripled. Black women were studying international relations, comparative politics, and political behavior; several of us worked in the survey research lab under Dr. Weisberg. Becoming a scholar is not a solitary effort. Having a strong, diverse, and talented intellectual community helped me to find the confidence to wade into uncharted and not especially friendly territory in legislative politics.

Navigating the maleness and, more explicitly, the white maleness of the subfield has not been easy, but I have had plenty of support and encouragement along the way. I remember in one of my graduate courses in legislative politics that a particular male student who was reviewing my research proposal told me that my project really did not have much to offer. Unfortunately for me, I believed him. Fortunately, my advisor and my committee had confidence in me. Jan told me then to trust my own ideas. She encouraged me to value them. I tell students now, “Take your own ideas seriously—not so seriously that you cannot hear criticism but seriously enough that not just anyone can dissuade you.”

The subfield has changed considerably since then and many more scholars have done work on bill sponsorship. These women have gained influence in the field and left meaningful marks on the discipline.

This is a really interesting question. Mentoring is a huge part of what we do as scholars. In some ways, we are literally lifting as we climb. It has been important for me to work with all kinds of students, especially with women and women of color. I am drawn to the students with big ideas and some uncertainty about how to proceed. I am less inspired by students who do what my former colleague and legislative politics scholar Dick Fenno once described to me as “pothole political science.” He said that some scholars answer relatively small questions using existing data, adding a variable here or a new modeling technique there. This was, in essence, “pothole” research: the filling in of gaps by making small, incremental advancements in the literature. There clearly is a place for that kind of work.

Other scholars charted new terrain, carved paths, thought big thoughts. This often takes longer, takes more creativity, more—well—bravery in some ways. Thinking big can be a lonely enterprise. Mentors can encourage us to do both—to think big and to fill in the gaps. I have had a zigzag pattern into and out of the academy. I have had amazing opportunities, mentors, colleagues, friends, and students. Building an intellectual community is indispensable to scholarship.

In legislative politics, the inner networks—those who perform the gatekeeping—are pretty insular and mostly white. There are more women now, but the nature of inquiry and the kinds of questions remain mostly the same. This means that a great many of us who study people in legislatures—for example, political representation—are not considered legislative studies scholars. It also means that the kinds of questions being asked and valued often are devoid of the insights that could happen if scholars took a minute to see the actual world around them. For instance, in the study of landmark legislation, many of the most important policies that changed the lives of women, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Indigenous people are overlooked. Not all, of course; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 always make the cut. But I have wondered what a compilation of the landmark legislation for previously marginalized groups would look like. What are the characteristics of the individuals who are credited with sponsoring those bills? Why did those people ultimately sponsor the bills rather than someone else? What outside organizations helped shape these landmark bills? Why were they supported and why have the same kinds of legislators supported these kinds of policies over time? When have coalitions expanded or contracted and why? In other words, whose experiences are left in the shadows of so-called landmark legislation? What can we learn about politics by looking in the corners that often are left unexplored or not seen?

I have found that, over time, my interest keeps returning to the effects of diversity on institutions. I am still interested in how changing who is in the legislature changes what the legislature does. When I think about a smallish institutional space such as a department, it is easy to see many of the influences that a more-diverse faculty has on the kinds of things that a department does. A department’s core functions remain regardless of who sits in the seats, but some of what it does with its discretionary time and resources shifts as the people do. So, for instance, a department with more than one woman (some would say a critical mass is necessary) might devote more resources to recruiting female graduate students. Similarly, a department with one or more tenured Black or Latino faculty members might make different hiring decisions or institute new policies to diversify the curriculum, such as offering more REP courses or auditing course syllabi to ensure the inclusion of work from scholars of color. It also could be the case—and has been in my own experience—that in a more-diverse department, white faculty take up more diversity work.

The same process that underlies the exchange of ideas, interests, and skillsets in a department could translate to much larger institutions, such as Congress. It may well be the case that white, male members of Congress hear about or engage in conversations about gender or racial and ethnic issues and then use their own experience in the legislature to move issues along that otherwise might have stalled. The DREAM Act is one key example. It began as bills going nowhere, introduced by junior members of Congress and then was taken up by Senators Orrin Hatch and Dick Durbin, renamed, and moved forward. The DREAM Act failed by five votes in the Senate in 2010, after years of advocacy and having already passed the House of Representatives. Diversity—and inclusion—may lead to both innovative opportunities and innovative solutions.

In my own scholarship, I am working with a fabulous interdisciplinary team of scholars on the effects of diversity in social movements. I also am still very interested in symbolic politics and bill sponsorship. I take every chance I get to remind researchers that the simplest way that people understand politics is through symbols; therefore, understanding the ownership, definition, and manipulation of symbols is crucial to understanding the political enterprise. Dismissing symbols or symbolic gestures because they are difficult to measure consistently is a mistake. Our current politics is replete with symbols and not only the obviously symbolic ones, such as naming schools (or military bases), but also less obvious examples, such as introducing bills in one chamber that have zero chance of passing the other chamber and voting 20 times to repeal bills such as the Affordable Care Act.

Minority representation is an area that is ripe for innovation and new inquiry as the Congressional Black Caucus and the Hispanic Caucus mature and their members age. We are now at an interesting juncture in which retirements and credible primary challenges will arise. It reminds me of the 1990s, when Black legislators began vying for the seats of white Democrats. What is on the horizon now? How will representation change generationally, racially, and ethnically to reflect new issues and demographic shifts in districts? So many questions remain. It is really a rewarding time to study legislatures, legislators, and legislative institutions and behavior.