Sean Kim Butorac

Sean Kim Butorac is Assistant Professor of Political Science at North Central College where he joined the faculty in 2020. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Washington, where he specialized in Race & Ethnicity Politics, Political Theory, and Public Law.

Dr. Butorac's research and teaching interests center on the history and politics of race, particularly questions of law and race, racial capitalism, and the politics of resistance. His current project, States of Insurrection: Race, Resistance, and the Laws of Slavery, 1650-1899 is a transatlantic political and intellectual history of resistance to enslavement. Told from the perspective of those most affected by slavery: free and enslaved Black people, this work shows how resistance to enslavement altered the making of law and race in ways that still structure modern policing, protest law, and popular responses to anti-racist movements like Black Lives Matter. 

A Washington native and longtime Seattle resident, Dr. Butorac now lives in Chicago with his partner along with their two dogs, Percy and Olive. 

Selected Scholarship

Butorac, Sean Kim. "Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, and the Politics of Love." Political Research Quarterly 71, no. 3 (September 2018): 710-21.

Butorac, Sean Kim. States of Insurrection: Race, Resistance, and the Laws of Slavery (working book manuscript).

Courses Taught

The American Political System

Law, Politics, and Society

Constitutional Law

Rights, Liberties, and Justice

Race and the Carceral State

Black Lives Matter