Pryor Center Presents 'From Blue to Red: The Rise of the GOP in Arkansas'

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John C. Davis

The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences launches the 2021-22 Season of Pryor Center Presents at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 29, with "From Blue to Red: The Rise of the GOP in Arkansas," featuring John C. Davis, associate professor of political science and director of governmental relations at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.

The series is part of the Pryor Center's expanded mission of education, research and outreach. Free, in-person events are being held at the Pryor Center each month, and limited, reserved seating will be available. Please register in advance to reserve your seat for this lecture.  

In V.O. Key's seminal work on Southern politics, he wrote this about the Democratic Party in Arkansas: "Perhaps in Arkansas we have the one-party in its most undefiled and undiluted form."

Since that time, the state has been a fascination to state politics scholars and for those who study Southern politics, in particular. Up until very recently, the peculiar situation of Arkansas politics had been that it remained, for the most part, a rather solid, one-party Democratic state even as other Southern states had begun the transition from Democratic Party control to reliably Republican.

However, once the political landscape of Arkansas began to shift from Democratic to Republican Party dominance, the political balance of power in the Natural State changed in a dramatic way.

In coordination with the Pryor Center, Davis' study builds on decades of insightful academic research on the state's politics and dives deeper into the dynamics of the modern Republican Party in Arkansas, the changing political behavior of the state's voters and how this sudden partisan shift has impacted policy-making.

Davis completed his B.A. and M.A. in political science at the U of A and his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Missouri in Columbia. His research interests include political parties, public policy, Southern politics and Arkansas politics. 

Masks are required and vaccinations are strongly encouraged at all Pryor Center events.

Upcoming Pryor Center Presents

Oct. 14 — 'Abstract Unions' — Presented by Marlon Blackwell, Distinguished Professor and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the U of A. Blackwell, working outside the architectural mainstream, will discuss his architecture and design process as being based in design strategies that draw upon vernaculars, building typologies and the contradictions of place — strategies that seek to transgress conventional boundaries for architecture.

Nov. 4 — 'City in the Woods: John Cooper, Sr., Cherokee Village, Arkansas, and the Founding of the American Retirement Community' — Presented by Stephen Luoni, Distinguished Professor of Architecture, and Steven L. Anderson, chair in Architecture and Urban Studies and director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center. Luoni will talk about the early retirement community industry, focusing on Cherokee Village in the Ozark foothills. 

Dec. 2 — 'Psychological Distress During the COVID-19 Epidemic: The Effects by Race, Ethnicity and Class' — Presented by Brittany N. Hearne, assistant professor in the sociology and criminology department at the U of A. This lecture will focus on research collected from nationally representative survey data and in-depth interview data collected in the Northwest Arkansas Region during 2020. The findings reveal both national patterns of psychological distress across race/ethnicity and educational attainment and specific coping resources and strategies used by college-educated Black Arkansans to decrease distress.

About The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History: The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History is an oral history program with the mission to document the history of Arkansas through the collection of spoken memories and visual records, preserve the collection in perpetuity, and connect Arkansans and the world to the collection through the Internet, TV broadcasts, educational programs, and other means. The Pryor Center records audio and video interviews about Arkansas history and culture, collects other organizations' recordings, organizes these recordings into an archive, and provides public access to the archive, primarily through the website at pryorcenter.uark.edu. The Pryor Center is the state's only oral and visual history program with a statewide, seventy-five county mission to collect, preserve, and share audio and moving image recordings of Arkansas history.

About the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences: The Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is the largest and most academically diverse unit on campus with three schools, 16 departments and 43 academic programs and research centers. The college provides the majority of the core curriculum for all University of Arkansas students.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 3 percent of colleges and universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.