Research Overview

Interests: Political Science; American History

PhD, Harvard, 1994. American politics, history, institutions. Current research on Congress, state legislatures, and urban politics. Books include The Making of New Deal Democrats (University of Chicago Press, 1989), Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (Harvard University Press, 1999), and a forthcoming book (with Steven S. Smith) on the development of Senate party leadership in the 19th and 20th centuries. Articles include No Strength in Numbers: The Failure of Big-City Bills in American State Legislatures, 1880-2000 (with Thad Kousser), American Political Science Review (2013); "The Dynamics of Party Government in Congress" (with Steven S. Smith) in Congress Reconsidered, 10th ed. (CQ Press, 2013); “Broad Bills or Particularistic Policy? Historical Patterns in American State Legislatures” (with Thad Kousser), American Political Science Review (2010); "Pockets of Expertise: Institutional Capacity in Twentieth-Century State Legislatures" (with Nancy Burns, Laura Evans, and Corrine McConnaughy), Studies in American Political Development (2008); "Legislatures as Political Institutions: Beyond the Contemporary Congress" (with John Huber) in Political Science: The State of the Discipline, 3rd ed. (American Political Science Association and W. W. Norton, 2002); "The Growth of Voluntary Associations in America, 1840-1940" (with Robert Putnam), Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1999); "Representing Urban Interests: The Local Politics of State Legislatures" (with Scott Allard and Nancy Burns), Studies in American Political Development (1998); and "Emergence of Legislative Institutions" (with Kenneth A. Shepsle), Legislative Studies Quarterly (1989). Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1996-97. Recipient of a 1998 Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching. Chair of the Department of Political Science, 1999-2011. Teaches courses in the fields of American politics and American history.

Professor Gamm is glad to sit on graduate committees, but he cannot serve as primary advisor for graduate students in History

Graduate Research Fields

I am not accepting new graduate student advisees for our MA and PhD programs.

Courses Offered (subject to change)

• HIST 378:  Race, History, and Urban Politics, Syllabus

Selected Publication Covers

Selected Publications

• Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed
  (Harvard University Press, 1999)