Michael Nelson is the Fulmer Professor of Political Science at Rhodes College. He teaches courses on U.S. Politics (151), the American Presidency (340), Southern Politics (245), and the Senior Seminar (485).  In addition, he teaches in the College’s humanities course, The Search for Values in the Light of Western History and Religion, and is the coauthor of a book about the Search course, Celebrating the Humanities: A Half Century of the Search Course at Rhodes College (1996).

Nelson has published twenty-five books, including How the South Joined the Gambling Nation: The Politics of State Policy Innovation, with John Mason (2008), which won the 2009 V. O. Key Award from the Southern Political Science Association.   His other recent books include The Presidency and the Political System, 9th ed. (2010), The Elections of 2008 (2009), The Evolving Presidency: Landmark Documents (2008), and The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-2007, with Sidney Milkis (2008).  According to a study by the Hauenstain Center for Presidential Studies, two of the top five books used in college and university courses on the American Presidency are by Nelson.

Nelson has published numerous articles in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Politics and Political Science Quarterly and in periodicals such as Newsweek, the New York Times, and Virginia Quarterly Review.  He writes frequently for the Review section of the Chronicle of Higher Education.  He is a nonresident Senior Fellow of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs.

Although most of Nelson’s articles have been about American politics and government, he also has written about topics such as C. S. Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Charles Dickens, Garrison Keillor, and baseball.  More than fifty of these articles have been reprinted in anthologies of political science, history, and English composition. He is editor of the American Presidential Elections book series for the University Press of Kansas and is currently writing a book about the 1968 election and compiling an anthology called The West Point Reader.

Prof. Nelson′s Vita (PDF)