Research Areas
Political Communications, Race and Gender Politics, Public Opinion, and Political Psychology
Political Communications, Race and Gender Politics, Public Opinion, and Political Psychology
Peer-Reviewed Scholarship
Harbin, M.B. 2020. “Collaborative Note Taking: A Tool for Creatinga More Inclusive College Classroom.” College Teaching
Collaborative note-taking is a pedagogical technique that asks students to rotate note-taking responsibilities during class meetings in a shared document. Implementing this technique helped me, as an instructor, better leverage my students’ strengths and weaknesses in an introductory American government class—though the benefits should extend to a wide range of disciplinary contexts. In particular, collaborative note-taking helped level the playing field for students entering my classroom with wide-ranging levels of prior preparation. It also provided a consistent access point for evaluating student comprehension and learning and improved the quality of classroom discussion. As a result, implementing this pedagogical approach can help foster a more collaborative, inclusive, and equitable learning environment in university classrooms.
Harbin, M.B., Thurber, A., & Bandy, J. 2019. “Teaching Race, Racism,and Racial Justice: Pedagogical Principles and Classroom Strategies forCourse Instructors.” Race and Pedagogy Journal: Teaching and Learning for Justice Vol. 4: No. 1, Article 1.
Teaching on topics of race and racism presents unique challenges to leaders in the university classroom setting. Despite an increasing number of instructors bringing a critical analysis of racial in/justice to their curriculum, many report challenges in teaching this content effectively. In this article, we address these challenges. We define common challenges in teaching racial content and articulate four principles for course planning around topics of race, racism, and racial justice. Then, drawing on a systematic review of scholarship examining issues of difference within a diverse range of disciplinary settings, we introduce a set of five pedagogical strategies, and supporting classroom practices, that will help instructors effectively manage everyday classroom interactions. This article contributes to the vast literature on teaching race and anti-racist education by synthesizing guiding pedagogical principles for course planning and classroom management that are applicable in a wide array of disciplinary contexts and providing concrete strategies that committed instructors, at varying levels of experience, can implement in their courses.
Selected Works in Progress
“The Contingency of Compassion: Media Depictions of Drug Addiction”
Previous work suggests that media coverage of policy issues is primarily driven by stereotypes of groups, which unconsciously inform editorial choices. While this work presents a compelling account of the role of group-level racial stereotypes on the content of news coverage, I argue that it underestimates the ways in which the spatial areas where people reside are also stereotyped and may lead to individuals from the same racial group being depicted in divergent ways. Through a content analysis of news coverage during two recent drug scares, I find support for the important role that racial-group stereotypes play on media depictions of policy issues. At the same time, results of the analysis indicate an important role of stereotypes of spatial areas. More specifically, I find that substantive boosts in compassionate depictions of drug use are primarily targeted toward (presumably White and affluent) drug users living in suburban areas as compared to drug users who reside in either rural areas (disproportionately White but presumably less affluent) or urban areas (disproportionately non-White). My findings suggest that future work on race and media should investigate group-level racial stereotypes as well as widely-shared perceptions of the areas where policy beneficiaries are thought to reside.
"Nobody's Free Until Everybody's Free: How Feminist Identification Influences White Americans' Willingness to Reocgnize and Respond to Racial Discrimination" (with Michele Margolis)
While a long history of Black feminist thought grapples with the relationship be- tween gender and racial oppression, both historical and present-day examples showcase how white feminists often struggle to make this connection. In this study, we examine the relationship between white Americans’ feminist identification and perceiving discrimination toward other groups. Specifically, we investigate how identifying in feminist terms, together with the clarity of cues regarding racial bias in decision-making, influence white Americans’ ability to see gender and racial discrimination as interconnected phenomena and react accordingly. Results of both correlational and experimental analyses suggest that white respondents who identify strongly as feminists are more likely than their non and weak feminist counterparts to perceive racial discrimination both when racial bias is a clearly defined factor in decision-making as well as in cases where the influence of race is more ambiguous. These findings suggest that adopting subgroup identities may, in some cases, heighten awareness about the discrimination faced by racial and ethnic minorities among racially advantaged group members. Recognizing discrimination is a necessary precursor to forming broad, diverse coalitions around racial injustice and inequality. Our results suggest that some white feminists may be well-suited to join the coalition.