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Cody Melcher

Assistant Professor

Departments

  • College of Arts and Sciences
  • Sociology

Bio

Dr. Cody R. Melcher joined the faculty of Loyola University New Orleans in 2022 after receiving his Ph.D. in sociology from the City University of New York. His research focuses primarily on the intersection of race and class in American public opinion and political behavior. His work has been published in Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, Ethnic and Racial Studies, American Politics Research (APR), Critical Sociology, Labor: Studies in Working Class History, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, Teaching Sociology, and elsewhere.

Dr. Melcher was the recipient of the 2023 Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching, the 2024 Faculty Excellence Award in Advising, and the 2024-2025 Jon. T. Altschul Award for Faculty Excellence in Community Engagement. 

Dr. Melcher’s teaching interests include quantitative methods, the study of capitalism, urban politics, race and class, social policy, and labor history. He has also taught in the departments of political science and sociology at Wayne State University and the City College of New York.

Dr. Melcher is also a research associate at the Workplace Justice Project (WJP), housed in the Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic & Center for Social Justice, Loyola University College of Law.

Dr. Melcher also teaches courses to incarcerated students at the Rayburn Correctional Center in Angie, Louisiana as part of the Loyola at Rayburn (Lo-Ray) prison education program.

Classes Taught:

  • Statistics
  • Research Methods and Techniques
  • Capitalism
  • Race Scholars Denied
  • Social Policy
  • Urban Sociology

Areas of Expertise:

  • The Intersection of Race and Class
  • Economic Insecurity
  • The Political Economy of Racism
  • Labor
  • Experimental Designs
  • Public Opinion
  • Methods

Publications

  • Melcher, Cody and Spencer Lindsay. 2025. "Investigating the Origins of Status Threat Among White Americans." Public Opinion Quarterly. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfae055
  • Melcher, Cody R. and Spencer Lindsay. 2024. “What Do American Socialists Really Believe? Polarization, Ideology, and the Problem of Socialist Identifiers.” Critical Sociology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205241281752
  • Melcher, Cody R. 2024. “Black Lives Matter and the Changing Sociological Canon: An Analysis of Syllabi from 2012 to 2023.” Teaching Sociology 52(4): 377-384. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092055X241262768
  • Melcher, Cody R., and Joseph van der Naald. 2024. “The Centrality of the Workplace and Class Consciousness in the US South: The New Orleans Community Studies.” Journal of Labor and Society. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10154
  • Melcher, Cody R. and Michael Goldfield. 2024. “Gérer les affaires de la bourgoisie à partentière: L’état américain, la législation progressiste et le New Deal” [“Managing the Common Affairs of the Whole Bourgeoisie: The American State, Progressive Legislation, and the NewDeal”]. Mouvement ouvrier, Révolutions et Lutte des Classes (MOLCER) Issue 8. Translated into French by Donna Kesselman.
  • Melcher, Cody. 2023. “Race Scholars Denied Syllabus”. TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology. Washington DC: American Sociological Association. DOI: https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/race-scholars-denied-syllabus
  • Melcher, Cody R. 2023. “Economic Insecurity and the Racial Attitudes of White Americans.” American Politics Research (APR) 51(3): 343-356. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221148677
  • Melcher, Cody R. 2022. “Economic Self-Interest and Americans’ Redistributive, Class, and Racial Attitudes: The Case of Economic Insecurity.” Political Behavior 45: 175-196. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09694-x
  • Melcher, Cody R. 2021. “Who’s Afraid of 1619?: Pedagogy, Race, and Class in the United States.” Dialectical Anthropology 45.2: 183-189. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-021-09620-x
  • Melcher, Cody R. 2020. “The Political Economy of ‘White Identity Politics’: Economic Self-Interest and Perceptions of Immigration.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 44.2: 293-313. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1730925
  • Melcher, Cody R. 2020. “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: W.E.B. Du Bois, Left-Wing Radicalism, and the Problem of Interracial Labor Unionism.” Critical Sociology 46(7-8): 1041-1055. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920519887495
  • Melcher, Cody R. & Michael Goldfield. 2019. “The Failure of Labor Unionism in the US South.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.777
  • Goldfield, Michael & Cody R. Melcher. 2019. “The Myth of Section 7(a): Worker Militancy, Progressive Labor Legislation, and the Coal Miners.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 16.4: 49-65. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-779018