Julie Novkov

Julie Novkov is an American political scientist, currently serving as the Dean of Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy but also a professor of political science and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. She studies the history of American law, American political development, and subordinated identities, with a focus on how laws are used for social control while also being affected by social reform movements.

Early career and education Novkov attended Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, earning an AB in 1989. After graduating, she attended the New York University School of Law, obtaining a JD in 1992. In 1996, Novkov became a professor in the department of political science at the University of Oregon. From 2018 to 2021 she was the director of undergraduate studies in that department, and from 2008 to 2011 she was the director of graduate studies. To establish the gendered origins of modern employment laws, Novkov draws on hundreds of cases that concerned labor issues between 1873 and 1937, from both the state and federal level. Novkov separates the legal history of Alabama's anti-miscegenation law into several periods within the span 1865–1954, and uses the legal trends within each period to argue that the anti-miscegenation law was being used as a tool of state-building.

Novkov also wrote a text that introduces and explores the relationship between the American Supreme Court and its president, called The Supreme Court and the Presidency: Struggles for Supremacy and published in 2013. In addition to publishing in political science journals, she has also published extensively in law reviews, and has served as an editor for several books.

Novkov is a member of the 2020–2024 editorial leadership of the American Political Science Review, which is the most selective political science journal. She has previously served on the editorial board of five other journals. bias in academia, and political divisions in America. Novkov is a regular contributor to the American politics website A House Divided.

Selected works Constituting Workers, Protecting Women: Gender, Law, and Labor in the Progressive Era and New Deal Years, 2001 Racial Union: Law, Intimacy, and the White State in Alabama, 1865–1954, 2008 The Supreme Court and the Presidency: Struggles for Supremacy, 2013

Selected awards 2009 Ralph Bunche Award, American Political Science Association 2015 President's Award for Excellence in Teaching, University at Albany, SUNY Collins Fellowship, University at Albany, SUNY