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Cristina Beltrán, Haverford College

Career and Accomplishments

Cristina Beltrán is associate professor of political science at Haverford College. A political theorist, she holds a B.A. in Politics from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University. Beltrán teaches courses on modern and contemporary political theory, Latino politics in the United States, democratic theory, feminist political theory, and American political thought. She was the 2008 Haverford College recipient of the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching.

Broadly cast, Beltrán’s research interests center on questions of membership, identity, inequality, and the way in which these forces shape deliberation and participation in the public sphere. She is the author of Performing Unity: Latino Politics and the Pursuit of Visibility (forthcoming with Oxford University Press), which draws upon a diverse range of political, feminist, and cultural theorists to explore the various ways that Latinos in the United States construct themselves as political subjects. Her work has appeared in scholarly journals such as Political Theory and Political Research Quarterly as well as various edited volumes, and she currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Polity.

Beltrán has been a regular and active participant in ASPA meetings since 1999. She has served as president of the Women’s Caucus of the Western Political Science Association (2009) and as a member of numerous APSA committees, including the APSA Task Force on Graduate Education in Political Science (2002-04), the APSA Committee on Teaching and Learning (2004-06), the Annual Meeting Review Committee (2005-07), the Alice Paul Award Committee of the APSA Women’s Caucus (2005-06), and the Leo Strauss Award Committee for the best dissertation in the field of political philosophy (2008-09). She has been a longtime member of the Latino/a Caucus within APSA and has served on the APSA Committee on the Status of Latina/os in the Profession.

Statement of Views

If elected to council, I would work to ensure that APSA continue its efforts to be responsive to its diverse membership, particularly those underrepresented in the profession. I would be a strong advocate for methodological pluralism and encouraging cross-subfield and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of politics. I would also strive to represent the concerns of faculty at small, teaching-intensive institutions as well as those at underfunded public universities.