Campus Connection

Faculty members collaborate on research related to Obamas

One would think UW-La Crosse’s Obama scholar would be first in line to see the president speak on campus. But when President Barack Obama addressed a crowd of about 2,400 people at UWL about a year ago — the first time in university history that a sitting president has visited campus — Ray Block couldn’t get a ticket. “My co-workers in the Grants Office gave me a ribbing for being an Obama scholar who missed the event,” he says. Still Block, an associate professor of Political Science and Public Administration, has no shortage of insight on Obama. He’s been doing research related to him since 2008. [caption id="attachment_46398" align="alignright" width="240"] Ray Block[/caption] “His campaign caught my eye immediately — not just because of his race, but because had amassed so much initial popularity despite being a relative newcomer to national politics,” says Block. Block and Christina Haynes, assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, have both done research related to the Obamas. Haynes has a publication out about the politics of Michelle Obama's TV appearances. Block has written several papers about the influence of race on attitudes about Barack Obama. He’s looked into factors such as the role of racial considerations in vote choice and the potential influence of an Islamic sounding middle name — “Hussein” — on candidate preference in the 2008 election. [caption id="attachment_46401" align="alignright" width="240"] Christina Haynes[/caption] Haynes and Block recently collaborated on two Michelle Obama papers. The first, published in 2014 in the National Political Science Review, looks into how the first lady's television appearances affect her popularity ratings. The second is about how she uses media exposure to advocate for policy. Funded by a research grant from the C-SPAN Educational Foundation, it became the chapter of a book series published in early 2016, “Exploring the C-SPAN Archives: Advancing the Research Agenda.”   The Michelle Obama book chapter The book chapter in the series, “Exploring the C-SPAN Archives: Advancing the Research Agenda,” is an analysis of the first lady’s political speeches and other communications from two of her major policy initiatives. Block and Haynes argue that the first lady makes three rhetorical "moves" when she discusses the "Let's Move!" and "Joining Forces" programs including: emphasizing family/motherhood as a unifying identity, reassuring the public that she is “just like everyone else”, and blurring the lines between her private life and her public persona. “We hope that our study opens a space for other scholars to explore how Michelle Obama uses mom-in-chief rhetoric to counteract — and perhaps transcend —negative stereotypes of African-American women while advancing her political causes,” they write in a summary of the book chapter.