OMG A Defense Date!!!!

My Ph.D. just took another step closer to reality as my dissertation chair and the committee confirmed that I am ready to defend. An initial survey from my committee indicates that we may be shooting for the last week in April. I have to email my chair to confirm a date with her, but it looks as though all the pieces of the puzzle are finally falling together. I'm still a chapter behind schedule, but I should be able to shoot that out within two weeks. It's going to be a mad rush.

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I picked up an article by Prof. Vivien A. Schmidt, Boston University, entitled, "Institutionalism and the State" (2005). It's a review of The State: Theories and Issues edited by Colin Hay, David Marsh, and Michael Lister. For some reason their names are familiar but I can't put my finger on it at the moment. I have to check my bibliography at home for a reference. Anyways, the book is representative of a resurgence of state theories and the latest one is called "new institutionalism" which is an attempt to "bring the state back into" mainstream political science. "New institutionalism" is critical of the dominant agent-centered and behaviouralist approaches" to theories of the state and state power, and attempts to recontextualize politics from the dominance of "input-oriented theories of politics" to " the capacity of the institutions of the state." I'm checking it out because it sounds at first glance something that my dissertation falls properly under where the development of hate crimes legislation is not merely a social issue response or the mobilization of identity politics, but must be analyzed from the perspective of the state and its capacities to regulate issues and problems of identity and difference.