Meet Minority Fellowship Program Recipient Marcus Lee

The following student was named as 2016-2017 APSA Minority Fellowship Program recipient during the spring 2016 application cycle.

LeeMarcus.jpg-resize201x263-crop201x246Marcus Lee is a second-year doctoral student in political science at the University of Chicago, where he is a 2016 Ford Fellow and a 2015 Point Scholar. Before entering graduate school, Marcus earned a BA in sociology at Morehouse College. His senior thesis, which he completed as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a 2014 Yale Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow, explored the expansion of the non-profit industry during the height of the HIV epidemic (1986 – 1996) and its impact on emergent black gay politics. As a graduate student, Marcus aims to broaden this line of inquiry through a more general investigation of how and why black gay politics emerged, its trajectories, its interactions with other streams of black politics (e.g. black feminism, black nationalism, and radical egalitarianism), and its insights into bureaucratic decision-making, social epidemiology, and the rise of neoliberalism. He is also interested in the extent to which black gay political mobilization fits within and/or troubles existing categories of political engagement, i.e. formal political participation, infrapolitics, and contentious politics. Throughout graduate school and beyond, Marcus hopes to produce work that will impact the world and also the study of race and politics.

Learn more about the Minority Fellowship Program here.