The Identity Lab at Illinois (IL@IL) was founded in the June 2020. Faculty and students from the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign agreed that, although there were plenty of outlets in which to share current work, there was a need for a more collaborative space, in which to have substantive discussions and develop new research ideas.
For each biweekly meeting, lab members nominate up to two readings they are interested in discussing. Once all nominations are gathered, lab members vote for their top three choices, with the top two vote-getters chosen for discussion. Both nominations and voting are done anonymously to avoid any deference being inadvertently paid to faculty preferences.
Our lab meetings are informal, although we aim to devote roughly half of each meeting to each of the two selected readings. When discussing each reading, we make a point of focusing on what additional questions it inspires, with an eye towards what future contributions lab members could make to a given line of research, whether individually or in collaboration with one another.
Selected readings:
Acharya, Avidit, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen. "The Political Legacy of American Slavery." The Journal of Politics 78, no. 3 (2016): 621-641.
Homola, Jonathan, Miguel M. Pereira, and Margit Tavits. "Legacies of the Third Reich: Concentration Camps and Out-Group Intolerance." American Political Science Review 114, no. 2 (2020): 573-590.
Sirin, Cigdem V., Nicholas A. Valentino, and José D. Villalobos. "The social causes and political consequences of group empathy." Political Psychology 38, no. 3 (2017): 427-448.
Sirin, Cigdem V., José D. Villalobos, and Nicholas A. Valentino. "Group Empathy Theory: The effect of group empathy on US intergroup attitudes and behavior in the context of immigration threats." The Journal of Politics 78, no. 3 (2016): 893-908.
Egan, Patrick J. "Identity as dependent variable: How Americans shift their identities to align with their politics." American Journal of Political Science 64, no. 3 (2020): 699-716.
Abdelal, Rawi, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott. "Identity as a Variable." Perspectives on politics (2006): 695-711.
Davenport, Lauren D. "Beyond Black and White: Biracial Attitudes in Contemporary US Politics." American Political Science Review 110, no. 1 (2016): 52-67.
Dulani, Boniface, Adam S. Harris, Jeremy Horowitz, and Happy Kayuni. "Electoral Preferences Among Multiethnic Voters in Africa." Comparative Political Studies (2020): 0010414020926196.
Kurzban, Robert, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides. "Can race be erased? Coalitional Computation and Social Categorization." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98, no. 26 (2001): 15387-15392.
Blouin, Arthur, and Sharun W. Mukand. "Erasing ethnicity? Propaganda, Nation building, and Identity in Rwanda." Journal of Political Economy 127, no. 3 (2019): 1008-1062.
Alrababah, Ala, William Marble, Salma Mousa, and Alexandra Siegel. "Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice? The Effect of Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic Behaviors and Attitudes." (2019).
Lajevardi, Nazita, Kassra AR Oskooii, Hannah L. Walker, and Aubrey L. Westfall. "The Paradox between Integration and Perceived Discrimination among American Muslims." Political Psychology 41, no. 3 (2020): 587-606.
Ommundsen, Reidar, Knud S. Larsen, Kees van der Veer, and Dag-Erik Eilertsen. "Framing Unauthorized Immigrants: The Effects of Labels on Evaluations." Psychological reports 114, no. 2 (2014): 461-478.
Tyrberg, Maria. "Immigrants' Electoral Participation: The Cross-National Impact of Public and Political Hostility." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46, no. 15 (2020): 3210-3234.
Campbell, David E., John C. Green, and Geoffrey C. Layman. "The Party Faithful: Partisan Images, Candidate Religion, and the Electoral Impact of Party Identification." American Journal of Political Science 55, no. 1 (2011): 42-58.
Dixon, Angela R., and Edward E. Telles. "Skin Color and Colorism: Global Research, Concepts, and Measurement." Annual Review of Sociology 43 (2017): 405-424.
Bonilla, Tabitha, and Alvin B. Tillery. "Which Identity Frames Boost Support for and Mobilization in the# BlackLivesMatter Movement? An Experimental Test." American Political Science Review 114, no. 4 (2020): 947-962.
Conley, Robin. "Living with the Decision that Someone Will Die: Linguistic Distance and Empathy in Jurors' Death Penalty Decisions." Language in Society (2013): 503-526.
Williamson, Scott, Claire L. Adida, Adeline Lo, Melina R. Platas, Lauren Prather, and Seth H. Werfel. "Family Matters: How Immigrant Histories Can Promote Inclusion." American Political Science Review (2020): 1-8.
Chudy, Jennifer. "Racial Sympathy and its Political Consequences." The Journal of Politics 83, no. 1 (2021): 000-000.
Tavits, Margit, and Efrén O. Pérez. "Language Influences Mass Opinion toward Gender and LGBT Equality." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 34 (2019): 16781-16786.
Wellman, Elizabeth Iams. "Emigrant Inclusion in Home Country Elections: Theory and Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa." American Political Science Review (2020): 1-15.
De Micheli, David. "Racial Reclassification and Political Identity Formation." World Politics: 1-51.
Rauf, Tamkinat. "How College Makes Liberals (or Conservatives)." Socius 7 (2021).
Sumption, Madeleine. "How Useful are Survey Data for Analyzing Immigration Policy?." Data & Policy 2 (2020).
Castro, F. G., Rebeca Rios, and Harry Montoya. "Ethical Community-Based Research with Hispanic or Latina (o) Populations: Balancing Research Rigor and Cultural Responsiveness." The Handbook of Ethical Research with Ethnocultural Populations and Communities (2006): 137-153.
Frazer, Michael L. "Respect for Subjects in the Ethics of Causal and Interpretive Social Explanation." American Political Science Review 114, no. 4 (2020): 1001-1012.
Meeusen, Cecil, Koen Abts, and Bart Meuleman. "Between Solidarity and Competitive Threat?: The Ambivalence of Anti-Immigrant Attitudes among Ethnic Minorities." International Journal of Intercultural Relations 71 (2019): 1-13.
Diamond, Emily P. "The Influence of Identity Salience on Framing Effectiveness: An Experiment." Political Psychology 41, no. 6 (2020): 1133-1150.
Atkin, David, Eve Colson-Sihra, and Moses Shayo. "How Do We Choose our Identity? A Revealed Preference Approach using Food Consumption." Journal of Political Economy 129, no. 4 (2021): 000-000.
Margolis, Michele F. "How Politics affects Religion: Partisanship, Socialization, and Religiosity in America." The Journal of Politics 80, no. 1 (2018): 30-43.