Professor Gottschalk specializes in American politics, with a focus on criminal justice, health policy, race, the development of the welfare state, and business-labor relations.
Her latest book is Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (Princeton University Press, 2014). She is also the author of The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which won the 2007 Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, and The Shadow Welfare State: Labor, Business, and the Politics of Health Care in the United States (Cornell University Press, 2000).
Professor Gottschalk is a former editor and journalist and was a university lecturer for two years in the People’s Republic of China. She was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York and was named a Distinguished Lecturer in Japan by the Fulbright Program. She served on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences National Task Force on Mass Incarceration and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration. She is a contributor to the Academy's final report, The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences (National Academies Press, 2014).
She has a B.A. in history from Cornell University, an M.P.A. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.
Courses Taught:
- The American Presidency
- Race and Criminal Justice
- The Politics of Crime and Punishment
- American Political Development
- Business, Government, and Public Policy
- Power and Resistance in the United States
“Democracy and the Carceral State in America,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 651 (January 2014): 288-95, http://ann.sagepub.com/content/651/1/288.extract .
“Sentenced to Life: Penal Reform and the Most Severe Sanctions,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science, vol. 9 (Palo Alto: Annual Reviews, 2013): 353-82, http://www.annualreviews.org/eprint/8mGIHyu22hAe7pQK9Y7M/full/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-102612-134014 .
“The Politics of the Carceral State: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” in David Scott, ed., Why Prison? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013): 233-58.
“The Carceral State and the Politics of Punishment,” in Jonathan Simon and Richard Sparks, eds., Handbook of Punishment and Society (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 2012): 205-41.
“No Way Out? Life Sentences and the Politics of Penal Reform,” in Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat, eds., Life Without Parole: America’s New Death Penalty? (New York: NYU Press, 2012): 227-81.
“Kicking the Habit,” The New Republic, February 13, 2012, http://www.newrepublic.com/book/review/drug-policy .
“Days Without End: Life Sentences and Penal Reform,” Prison Legal News 23.1 (2012): 1-15, https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2012/jan/15/days-without-end-life-sentences-and-penal-reform/.
“Is Death Different?” The New Republic, March 16, 2011, http://www.newrepublic.com/book/review/peculiar-institution-david-garland.
“The Past, Present, and Future of Mass Incarceration in the United States,” Criminology & Public Policy 10.3 (2011): 483-504.
“They’re Back: The Public Plan, the Reincarnation of Harry and Louise, and the Limits of Obamacare,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 36:3 (2011): 393-401.
“Prison Overcrowding and Brown v. Plata,” The New Republic, June 8, 2011, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/89575/prison-overcrowding-brown-plata-supreme-court-california.
“Extraordinary Sentences and the Proposed Police Surge,” Criminology & Public Policy 10:1 (2011): 123-36.
“The Great Recession and the Great Confinement: The Economic Crisis and the Future of Penal Reform,” in Richard Rosenfeld, Kenna Quinet, and Crystal Garcia, eds., Contemporary Issues in Criminological Theory and Research: The Role of Social Institutions (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage, 2011): 343-370.
“The Long Shadow of the Death Penalty: Mass Incarceration, Capital Punishment, and Penal Policy in the United States,” in Austin Sarat and Jurgen Martschukat, eds., Is the Death Penalty Dying? European and American Perspectives (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011): 292-321.
“Cell Blocks and Red Ink: Mass Incarceration, the Great Recession, and Penal Reform,” Daedalus 139:3 (2010): 62-73.
“American Hell,” The New Republic, June 28, 2010, http://www.newrepublic.com/book/review/american-hell .
“U.S. Health Reform and the Stockholm Syndrome,” in Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, eds., Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism, special issue of the Socialist Register (Pontypool, Wales: Merlin Press, 2009): 103-24.
“The Long Reach of the Carceral State: The Politics of Crime, Mass Imprisonment, and Penal Reform in the United States and Abroad,” Law & Social Inquiry 34:2 (2009): 439-72.
“Money and Mass Incarceration: The Bad, the Mad, and Penal Reform,” Criminology & Public Policy 8:1 (2009): 97-109.
“Sick on Arrival: Health Care Reform in the Age of Obama,” New Labor Forum 18:3 (2009): 28-36, http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:2269/docview/237230534/E2CA6CEB6904AEFPQ/5?accountid=14707 .
“Hiding in Plain Sight: American Politics and the Carceral State,” Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 11 (Palo Alto, Ca.: Annual Reviews, 2008): 235-60, http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.060606.135218.
“The World’s Warden: Crime, Punishment, and Politics in the United States,” Dissent, Fall 2008: 57-65.
“Not the Usual Suspects: The Politics of the Prison Boom,” Prison Legal News 19.7 (2008): 1-12, https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2008/jul/15/not-the-usual-suspects-the-politics-of-the-prison-boom/ .
“Two Separate Societies, One in Prison, One Not,” Washington Post, April 15, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/14/AR2008041402451.html .
“Show Me the Money: Labor and the Bottom Line of National Health Insurance,” Dissent, Spring 2008: 75-80.
“Reforming a Prison Nation,” with Sasha Abramsky, The American Prospect online edition, August 9, 2007, http://prospect.org/article/reforming-prison-nation.
“Back to the Future? Health Benefits, Organized Labor, and Universal Health Care,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 32.6 (2007): 923-70.
“Prisoners of the Census: How and Where the U.S. Counts Inmates Has Huge, and Unsettling, Consequences,” L.A. Times, February 19, 2007, http://articles.latimes.com/2007/feb/19/opinion/oe-gottschalk19 .
“The Health of the Nation: Labor, Business and Health Care Reform,” New Labor Forum, 16.1 (2007): 9-20, http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:2269/docview/237232515?accountid=14707 .
“ ‘It’s the Health-Care Costs, Stupid!’: Ideas, Institutions, and the Politics of Organized Labor and Health Policy in the United States,” Studies in American Political Development 14.2 (2000): 234-52.
“The Elusive Goal of Universal Health Care: Organized Labor and the Institutional Straightjacket of the Private Welfare State,” Journal of Policy History 11.4 (1999): 367-98, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0898030600003389 .
“The Missing Millions: Organized Labor, Business, and the Defeat of Clinton’s Health Security Act,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 24.3 (1999): 489-529.