Grace Elizabeth Reinke

Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of New Orleans

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About Grace

Reinke has written about the politics of labor, US political economy, feminist theory, legal mobilization, and the political dimensions of inequality. She is currently at work on a book project based on her dissertation research. She joined the UNO department of political science in the fall of 2022 as an assistant professor, where she now teaches courses in public law and serves as the department's pre-law advisor.

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Contributions

Lessons From the Movement to Enact and Implement a Bill of Rights for Domestic Workers in Seattle

Basic Facts Brief, October 2018

Publications

"TANF at 20: Failing Louisiana's Poor", The Louisiana Budget Project, August 2016.

Provides a deep dive into the state of Louisiana's cash welfare system administration since TANF's founding in 1996. Reveals massive diversions of TANF funds from welfare programs to other state needs during times of budgetary hardship. Findings quoted by NPR and The Atlantic.

"Surviving the Velvet Hammer: Analyzing the Criminalization of Working Class Mothers in a Neoliberal Context" in The Palgrave Handbook of Intersectionality in Public Policy, edited by Olena Hankivsky and Julia S. Jordan-Zachery, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Underscores the importance of intersectionality in understanding how race, gender, class, and geography all contribute to the modern wave of criminalization. Shows how the criminalization of mothers and pregnant women - especially those from working class backgrounds - has become a trademark of neoliberal governance in US politics, using policy and media analysis of three case studies.