at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and her PhD in political science at MIT in 1987.
Her doctoral dissertation on "Unions and Politics: The Courts and American Labor, 1806-1896" was awarded the E.E.
Hattam's revised dissertation was published as her first book, Labor Visions and State Power (1993) and examines why labor has played a more limited role in national politics in the United States than in other advanced industrial societies.
Hattam taught at Yale University from 1987 to 1993, and was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation from 1997 to 1999 and a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for 2000-2001.
She joined the political science faculty at New School University in New York City in 1993 and is a professor and chair of the department.