Ruth Bloch Rubin studies American politics, with a substantive focus on legislative institutions, political parties, and American political development. Combining archival and interview data, her current work explores how divisions within political parties drive congressional development and structure lawmaking. Challenging existing theories of party power in Congress, she highlights the role of intraparty organizations in shaping both substantive and procedural change. Bloch Rubin is also working on a project that examines Congress’s provision of health services to American Indians in the early nineteenth century. She joins the University of Chicago from Harvard University, where she was Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research. She earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014.