Dr. Hanna Brant, assistant professor of political science and international relations, will be on a Drescher Leave for the Spring 2024 semester. The Drescher Leave Program is designed to support women and faculty of color who are disproportionately less likely to receive tenure and promotion. During this leave, Dr. Brant will be working on her project “Queering Candidacy: Queer Women’s Representation in U.S. State Legislatures”, which focuses on understanding the experiences of queer women seeking and winning elected office positions, serving during a time where there is backlash against the LGBTQ+ community, and how they are navigating this tension within the legislative process. This will include interviewing queer women working in politics in Albany, NY, Montpelier, VT, and Concord, NH, to collect data. Women are underrepresented in state legislatures and elected office, and the gap widens even more for women within the LGBTQ+ community. Throughout 2023, Dr. Brant has completed multiple works. These include her book review of Belinda Robnett and Katherine Tate’s “Gendered Pluralism” and guest commentary in Syracuse Post-Standard, “With fewer women in NYS Legislature, where will future leaders come from?" She has also published the articles “R&R: Retirements from and Retentions in the Popularly-Elected Senate'' (New England Journal of Political Science) and “The Rainbow Wave in 2020: The LGBTQ+ Community and the Path to Equitable Representation” (Identity Politics in US Elections).
Written by Alexis Savoie '24