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Patricia Boling

Photo of Patricia Boling

Promoted to Professor
Department of Political Science

boling@purdue.edu

Patricia Boling received her master’s and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in political science and her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in politics. Her research agenda has grown out an interest in how to make political sense of issues that are grounded in personal or intimate-life behaviors, like reproductive choice, sexual orientation, caring for children and doing housework, and decisions about eating. Her most recent research tackles an area in which little has been done in political science, which is a comparative approach to food and agriculture policy.

Boling’s most recent work in social welfare policies, especially work-family support policies, is represented in her latest book The Politics of Work-Family Policies, Comparing Japan, France Germany and the United States. (Cambridge University Press, 2015). In addition, she has written, Privacy and the Politics of Intimate Life (Cornell, 1996), and edited, Expecting Trouble: Surrogacy, Fetal Abuse, and New Reproductive Technologies (Westview, 1995). Her research deals broadly with how problems rooted in private life (e.g., the family, sexuality, reproductive matters, intimate relationships) come to be understood as political issues, a theme which she has played out with respect to feminist democratic theory, and is currently pursuing with respect to comparing family policies and democratic responsiveness in France, Germany, Japan, and the United States.

She has been recognized with the College of Liberal Arts award for outstanding undergraduate teaching and has been inducted into Purdue’s Book of Great Teachers.