Nicholas Rush Smith
Associate Professor
Director of the MA Program in International Affairs
Office
NAC 4/143B
Phone
212-650-5244
Website
Nicholas Rush Smith
Profile
Nicholas Rush Smith is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York 鈥 City College and the Graduate Center and Director of the Master鈥檚 Program in International Affairs at City College. He is also a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg.
Smith鈥檚 research utilizes qualitative methods to examine how democratic states use violence to produce order and why citizens sometimes use violence to challenge that order.
Based on approximately twenty months of ethnographic and archival research, Smith鈥檚 first book, Contradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Oxford University Press, 2019), explored these themes through the lens of crime, policing, and vigilantism in South Africa. The book won the Distinguished Book Award from the Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association, was co-winner of the Best Book Award from the African Politics Group of the American Political Science Association, and was named an Honorable Mention for the Charles Taylor Book Award of the Interpretive Methodologies and Methods Related Group of the American Political Science Association.
With Erica S. Simmons, Smith has also written about the intersection of comparative and ethnographic methods, co-editing Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry (Cambridge University Press, 2021), among other publications. For their work, Simmons and Smith were jointly awarded the David Collier Mid-Career Achievement Award from the Qualitative and Multi-Method Research Section of the American Political Science Association.
Smith鈥檚 work has also been published or is forthcoming in African Affairs, American Journal of Sociology, American Political Science Review, Comparative Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Polity, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, among other outlets. He has won fellowship or grant support from Fulbright Hays, the National Science Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Social Science Research Council, among other organizations. He has also held visiting researcher or fellowship positions at the Australian National University and the University of KwaZuluNatal and is a regular instructor in the Institute for Qualitative and Multimethod Research at Syracuse University. He was the inaugural recipient of CCNY鈥檚 Colin Powell School Faculty Teaching Award.
Currently, Smith is working on three book projects. The first examines the politics of police violence in democratic states, focusing on South Africa. The second explores the practice of 鈥渟hadow work,鈥 like ethnography and espionage, through a family history. The final project, with Erica S. Simmons, reconsiders the goal of generalization in political research.
Smith received his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.
Education
PhD, University of Chicago, 2013
MA, University of Chicago, 2004
MA, The George Washington University, 2003
BA, The College of William and Mary, 2001
Publications
BOOKS
Simmons, Erica S. and Nicholas Rush Smith (eds.). 2021. . New York: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2019. . New York: Oxford University Press. (Oxford Studies in Culture and Politics series)
JOURNAL ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
Simmons, Erica and Nicholas Rush Smith. Forthcoming. "How Cases Speak to One Another: Using Translation to Rethink Generalization in Political Science Research." American Political Science Review.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. Forthcoming. 鈥淣on-Event? Provisional Notes on The Marikana Massacre as a Moment of Failed Transformation.鈥 20&21: Revue d鈥橦istoire.
Simmons, Erica and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2023. 鈥淧luralizing Comparison.鈥 In The Oxford Handbook of Engaged Methodological Pluralism in Political Science, Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, Dino P. Christenson, and Valeria Sinclair-Chapman (eds.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2022. 鈥淭he State as Golem: Police Violence in Democratic South Africa.鈥 , Wale Adebanwi (ed.). Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Blake, Jonathan S. and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2022. 鈥.鈥 Violence: An International Journal 3 (1): 109-113.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2021. "." Polity 53 (3): 485-491.
Simmons, Erica S. and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2021. "Comparisons with an Ethnographic Sensibility: Studies of Protest and Vigilantism." In . Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith (eds.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Simmons, Erica S. and Nicholas Rush Smith with Lisa Wedeen. 2021. "Theory and Imagination in Comparative Politics: An Interview with Lisa Wedeen." In . Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith (eds.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Alan M. Jacobs and Tim B眉the with 48 others. 2021. 鈥.鈥 Perspectives on Politics 19 (1): 171-208.
Schwedler, Jillian, Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2021. 鈥.鈥 Perspectives on Politics.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2020. 鈥.鈥 Qualitative and Multi-Method Research 17-18 (1): 60-65.
Simmons, Erica S. and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2019. 鈥.鈥 Comparative Politics 51 (3): 341-359.
Simmons, Erica S., Nicholas Rush Smith, and Rachel Schwartz. 2018. "." Qualitative and Multi-Method Research 16 (1): 1-7. (Co-organizer of symposium on "Rethinking Comparison in the Social Sciences.")
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2017. 鈥.鈥 Comparative Politics 50 (1): 123-141.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2017. 鈥.鈥 In Global Lynching and Collective Violence: Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Michael Pfeifer, Ed. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Simmons, Erica and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2017. 鈥.鈥&苍产蝉辫;PS: Political Science and Politics 50 (1): 126-130.
Slater, Dan and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2016. 鈥.鈥 American Journal of Sociology. 121 (5): 1472-1516.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2015. 鈥.鈥 African Affairs 114(456): 341-360.
BOOK REVIEWS
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2021. 鈥溾橳he Terrorist Album: Apartheid鈥檚 Insurgents, Collaborators, and the Security Police鈥 by Jacob Dlamini.鈥 Africa Spectrum 0 (0): 1-3.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2020. 鈥'Township Violence and the End of Apartheid: War on the Reef' by Gary Kynoch.鈥 International Journal of African Historical Studies 52 (3): 485-486.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2018. 鈥溾橞odies of Truth: Law, Memory, and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa' by Rita Kesselring.鈥 Anthropological Quarterly 91 (2): 841-845.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2017. 鈥溾橢lectoral Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa' by Stephanie M. Burchard and 'The Limits of Democratic Governance in South Africa' by Louis A. Picard and Thomas Mogale." Perspectives on Politics 15 (1): 261-262.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Sinwell, Luke and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2022. 鈥淜illing the Collective.鈥 Africa Is a Country. July 20.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2020. "What Thirty Percent Unemployment Looks Like." Boston Review. 14 May.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2019. 鈥淐ontradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Democracy in Africa. 20 May. . (Invited)
Schwedler, Jillian M., Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2019. "Ethnography and Participant Observation." American Political Science Association Organized Section for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, Qualitative Transparency Deliberations, Working Group Final Reports, Report III.3 (August 2018).
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2018. 鈥淎partheid.鈥 In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Surveillance, Security, and Privacy. Bruce Arrigo, Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 2018. 鈥淪outh Africa.鈥 In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Surveillance, Security, and Privacy. Bruce Arrigo, Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Simmons, Erica and Nicholas Rush Smith. 2015. 鈥淭he Case for Comparative Ethnography.鈥 Qualitative and Multi-Method Research: Newsletter of the American Political Science Association Organized Section for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research 13 (2): 13-18.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 鈥淏eyond Pistorius: The Politics of South African Justice.鈥 African Arguments. September 12, 2014.
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 鈥淭he Struggle Continues: Mandela and His Legacies.鈥 Five Rupees. July 1, 2013. (Invited)
Smith, Nicholas Rush. 鈥淭he Wonga Coup: Transparency and Conspiracy in Equatorial Guinea.鈥 CSIS Online Africa Policy Forum. January 23, 2008: .
Courses Taught
GRADUATE
IR B6800 Research Methods
IR B6917 Africa in World Affairs
UNDERGRADUATE
PSC 10400 Introduction to World Politics
PSC 23000 Contemporary Comparative Politics
PSC 23800 Political Systems of Africa
PSC 31113 Argument and Evidence in Political Science
PSC 31548 Senior Thesis
PSC 33300 The Politics of Crime and Punishment