Jenn M. Jackson

• 2024 Spring
  • PSC/WGS 300 Selected Topics - Black Feminist Politics
• 2023 Fall
  • PSC 600 Selected Topics - Gender & Politics
• 2023 Spring
  • PSC 121 American National Government and Politics
  • PSC/WGS 300 Selected Topics - Black Feminist Politics
• 2022 Fall
  • PSC 804 Advanced Topics in Qualitative Methods
  • PSC 600 Selected Topics - Black Feminist Politics
• 2022 Spring
  • PSC/WGS 319 Gender and Politics
  • PSC/WGS 300 Selected Topics - Black Feminist Politics

Jenn M. Jackson (they/them) is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science. Jackson also holds faculty affiliations in African American studies, women’s and gender studies and LGBT studies, and is a senior research associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute.

Jackson's primary research is in Black politics with a focus on racial threat and trauma, gender and sexuality, political behavior, and social movements.

Jackson’s first academic book project "Policing Blackness" (University of Chicago Press, 2023) investigates the role of group threat in influencing Black Americans’ political behavior. Methodologically, they utilize quantitative analyses of survey data and experiments as well as qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with young Black Americans ages 18 to 35 to investigate both intergroup and intragroup differences in responses to and ideas about group threat. Jackson finds that Black women are most likely to express concerns about state-based and intragroup threat. Comparatively, Black men vary drastically in their responses to group threat depending on their sexual orientation, gender expression, and vulnerability to stereotypes.

Jackson is the author of the forthcoming book "Black Women Taught Us" (Random House Press, 2023). The book is an intellectual and political history of Black women’s activism, movement organizing and philosophical work that explores how women from Harriet Jacobs to Audre Lorde to the members of the Combahee River Collective, among others, have for centuries taught us how to fight for justice and radically reimagine a more just world for us all.

Jackson received a doctoral degree from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago where they also received a graduate certificate in gender and sexuality studies. Jackson earned a B.S. in industrial engineering from the University of Southern California with a minor in sociology, and went on to earn an M.A. with honors in political science from California State University, Fullerton, where they later taught Political Science Research Methods and Black Politics. 

"Race, Risks, and Responses: Mapping Young Black Americans' Responses to Group Threat", Sponsored by CUSE Grants - Seed Grant.

"To Be a Radical: How Intersectional Politics Remade Social Movements", Sponsored by Faculty Creative Activities and Research (FCAR) Grant Program.

• Journal Articles
  • Jackson, J. M., Juárez Pérez, M., Scott, J. and Wong, D., "Introduction to A Dialogue on the Status of Junior Women of Color in the Discipline." PS: Political Science & Politics, 2022.
  • Moffett-Bateau, A., Jackson, J. M., "Moving beyond Niceness: Reading bell hooks into the Radical Potential for the Discipline." Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 2022.
  • Jackson, J. M., Juárez Pérez, M., "Reclaiming Our Time and Labor: Contesting and Reframing Productivity Narratives in Political Science." PS: Political Science & Politics, 2022.
  • Jackson, J. M., "The Militancy of (Black) Memory: Theorizing Black-Led Movements as Disjunctures in the Normativity of White Ignorance." South Atlantic Quarterly, 2022.
  • Davies, E. J., Jackson, J. M. and Streeter, S., "Bringing abolition in: Addressing carceral logics in social science research." Social Science Quarterly, 2021.
  • Jackson, J. M., Shoup, B. and Williams, H. H., "Why Civically Engaged Research? Understanding and Unpacking Researcher Motivations." PS: Political Science & Politics, 2021.
  • Adams, C., Giles, D., Jackson, J. M. and Richardson, J., "For White Folks who Have Considered Terror, When Privilege was Enuf: The Thrills of the White Gaze." Portable Gray, 2020.
  • Jackson, J. M., "Private Selves as Public Property: Black Women's Self-Making in the Contemporary Moment." Public Culture, 2020.
  • Jackson, J. M., "Black Americans and the 'Crime Narrative': Comments on the use of news frames and their impacts on public opinion formation." Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2019.
  • Jackson, J. M., "Breaking Out of the Ivory Tower: (Re)Thinking Inclusion of Women and Scholars of Color in the Academy." Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, 2019.
• Book Chapters
  • Jackson, J. M., "Black Feminisms, Queer Feminisms, Trans Feminisms: Meditating on Pauli Murray, Shirley Chisholm, and Marsha P. Johnson against the Erasure of History." In Black Women's Cultural Histories: Across the Diaspora, From Ancient Times to the Present. Routledge, 2021.
  • Jackson, J. M., "Breaking Out of the Ivory Tower: (Re)Thinking Inclusion of Women and Scholars of Color in the Academy." In Me Too Political Science. Routledge, 2021.
  • Jackson, J. M., Tackie, H., "We Are How We Teach: Black Feminist Pedagogy as a Move Towards the Legibility and Liberation of All." In Critical Pedagogical Strategies to Transcend Hegemonic Masculinity. Peter Lang, 2021.
• Book Reviews
  • Jackson, J. M., "Abolition. Feminism. Now, by Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie." In Signs Journal Short Takes. Signs, 2022.
  • Jackson, J. M., "Political Mourning, by Heather Pool." In Political Science Quarterly. , 2022.
  • Jackson, J. M., "The Anger Gap, by David Phoenix." In Ethnic and Racial Studies. , 2021.
  • Jackson, J. M., "Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, edited by Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith." In National Review of Black Politics. , 2020.
  • Jackson, J. M., "Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter, by Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith." In Perspectives on Politics. , 2020.
  • Jackson, J. M., "Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, by Charlene A. Carruthers." In National Review of Black Politics. , 2020.
  • Jackson, J. M., "Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the 21st Century, by Barbara Ransby." In Black Perspectives. , 2018.

Women’s and Gender Studies, Univ of Texas, Austin, "To Be a Radical: Black Feminist Politics, Queer Organizing, and the Remaking of a Movement" (October, 2022)

Davies, E., Jackson, J. M., Ba, B., Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, "Funding Communities to Defund Police: Police, Nonprofits, and Reducing Community Violence" (September, 2022)

Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies, LeMoyne University, "Policing Blackness" (March, 2022)

Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies, Western Washington University, "Policing Blackness" (February, 2021)

Stanford University, "Race and the American Criminal Justice System" (June, 2020)

Annual Meeting of Theatrical Sound Designers and Composers Association (TSDCA), "Intersectionality 101: Understanding Power, Privilege, and Personal Responsibility" (June, 2019)

Department of Political Science at the Marquette University, "Race, Risks, and Responses: Young Black Americans and the Politics of Group Threat" (April, 2019)

Diversifying Higher Education in Illinois Fellow ($15,000), State of Illinois (2018 - 2019)

Ford Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship Honorable Mention, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018)

Diversifying Higher Education in Illinois Fellow ($15,000), State of Illinois (2017 - 2018)

NWSA Women of Color Leadership Project, National Women’s Studies Association (2017 - 2018)

Urban Doctoral Fellow ($1,000), University of Chicago (2017 - 2018)