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Amanda D. Clark

Assistant Teaching Professor, Florida International University
Chapter Leader: Florida SSN
Areas of Expertise:

About Amanda

Clark’s research focuses on social movements, election administration, and the U.S. policy process. She has examined the framing strategies of social movements including Black Lives Matter, the nonprofit community in Flint, MI in response to the water crisis and a national coalition in the anti-human trafficking field. After serving at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office in 2020, where she ran early voting, she has begun to focus her research on election administration and the role that public affairs academics play in supporting this essential public service.

Contributions

In the News

"With Election Misinformation Everywhere, Trust Local Supervisors of Election," Amanda D. Clark (with Monica A. Bustinza), Viewpoints, South Florida Sun Sentinel, September 19, 2022.

Publications

"Heavy Lifting: Emotional Labor and Election Administration" (with Christina Barsky). Administration & Society 55, no. 2 (2022).

Investigates the impact of emotional labor on election workers in this atmosphere. Uncovers the presence and nuances of emotional labor in election administration and raises questions about what this means for the future of election administration.

"Doubling Down on Austerity: Framing and Coronavirus Response" (with Ashley E. Nickels). Administrative Theory & Praxis (2020).

Words and symbols shape how the public understands, responds to, and navigates our new normal amid the COVID-19 pandemic; this framing shapes our collective understanding of who or what is valued. Austerity politics at all levels of government has not only helped to create a patchwork system of crisis response, but also explains the variation in framing of the pandemic response as tradeoffs among competing values (e.g., equity versus economy; us versus other; health versus business).

"Framing the Flint Water Crisis: Interrogating Local Nonprofit Sector Responses" (with Ashley N. Nickels). Administrive Theory & Praxis 41, no. 3 (2019): 200-224.

Notes the Flint Water Crisis captured the attention of the world in January 2016 when both the state and federal governments declared a public health emergency in Flint, MI. Finds that grassroots organizations and high-capacity nonprofits differed in their responses to the crisis due to their place in the power hierarchy and framed their responses by using different causal stories.

"Framing the Fight Against Human Trafficking: Movement Coalitions and Tactical Diffusion" (Lexington Books, 2019).

Examines the framing strategies of a prominent social movement coalition in the anti-human trafficking field. Finds that the organizational structure of the coalition helped members learn new tactics to fight both sex and labor trafficking in innovative ways.

"Black Lives Matter: (Re)Framing the Next Wave of Black Liberation" (with Prentiss A. Dantzler and Ashley E. Nickels). Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 42 (2018): 145-172.

Notes the rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM), as an intentionally intersectional movement, challenges one to consider the ways in which BLM is reimagining the lines of Black activism and the Black Liberation Movement. Notes the founders of BLM are intentionally inclusive of all Black lives no matter their gender, criminal status, immigration status, age or sexual orientation.

"Civil Rights, Social Movements, and Domestic Policy: The 1960 Nashville Student Sit-In Movement" (with Patrick G. Coy), in Understanding Nonviolence: Contours and Contexts, edited by Maia Carter Hallward and Julie M. Norman (Polity Press, 2015), 123-147.

Notes the success of the 1960 Nashville Student Sit-In Movement in desegregating the city’s downtown lunch counters was an important event in both the history of the US Civil Rights movement and in the diffusion and progression of nonviolent action nationally and internationally. Shows that Nashville is a useful case for teaching strategic nonviolent action at the university level because of its short duration, its relatively clear stages, its emphasis on training and discipline, and the integral role played by students.