Jenn M. Jackson
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Affiliate, Women’s and Gender Studies
Affiliate, African American Studies
Affiliate, LGBT Studies
Senior Research Associate, Campbell Public Affairs Institute
Degree
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2019
Specialties
Black Politics, Gender and Sexuality, Political Behavior, Public Opinion, Social Movements, Mixed Methods
Courses
Gender and Politics
Black Feminist Politics
Advanced Qualitative
Methods
Introduction to American National Government
Biography
Jenn M. Jackson (she/they) is
an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science. She also holds
faculty affiliations in African American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies,
and LGBT Studies. Jackson is a Senior Research Associate at the Campbell Public
Affairs Institute. Their research is in Black Politics with a focus on group
threat, gender and sexuality, political behavior, and social movements. Jackson
is the author of peer-reviewed articles at Public Culture, Politics,
Groups, and Identities, and the Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, andthe author of several forthcoming book chapters on the intersections of
race, gender, class, and politics.
Jackson’s first academic book
project investigates the role of threat in influencing Black Americans’
political behavior through the lens of policing in the United States. They find
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 received their 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 BS in Industrial
Engineering from the University of Southern California with a minor in
Sociology. They went on to earn an MA with honors in Political Science from
California State University, Fullerton where they later taught Political
Science Research Methods and Black Politics.
Publications
Jackson, Jenn M. (2020) “Private Selves as Public Property: Black Women’s Self-Making in the Contemporary Moment” Public Culture, DOI: 10.1215/08992363-7816317
Jackson, Jenn M. (2019) “Black Americans and the ‘crime narrative’: comments on the use of news frames and their impacts on public opinion formation,” Politics, Groups, and Identities, DOI: 10.1080/21565503.2018.1553198
Jackson, Jenn M. (2018) “Breaking Out of the Ivory Tower: (Re)Thinking Inclusion of Women and Scholars of Color in the Academy,” Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, DOI: 10.1080/1554477X.2019.1565459
Selected Works in Progress
Jackson,
Jenn M. “Gendering Threat: Young People’s Perceptions of the Seriousness of
Police Killings of Black Americans.”
Jackson,
Jenn M. “State of Emergency: Black Life and Death under the Neoliberal State.”
Jackson, Jenn M. “Black Publics and Counterpublics: (Re)
Situating the Queer and Feminist Work at the Margins of the Black Public
Sphere.
Jones, Ana and Jenn M. Jackson [equal contribution]. “How
Judgments of Belonging and Citizenship Shape Young Black Americans’ Political
Identities.”
Selected Chapters and Anthologies
Jackson, Jenn 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, 2020) (forthcoming)
Jackson, Jenn M. “They
Wanna Be Saved”: Black and Queer Women as Saviors and Superheroes in Higher Learning” in Higher
Learning and Social Inequality in the Early Twenty-First Century: Why A
1990s Movie Matters for America Today, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
(forthcoming).
Jackson, Jenn 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,
2020) (forthcoming).
Jackson, Jenn M. and
Hilary Tackie [equal contribution]. “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 (forthcoming).
Research Projects
Book Project: “Race, Risks, and Responses: Mapping Black
Americans’ Reactions to Policing in the US”
In this project, Jackson is concerned with how racial
socialization shapes daily perceptions of police/ing, how responses to the
threat of policing vary uniquely by race, gender, class, and embodiment, and
how those perceptions affect the political behavior of young Black
Americans. This work draws on critical race theory, political psychology, and
political behavior literature to foreground the ways that the threats
associated with group membership uniquely shape the social and political lives
and choices of young Black Americans.
Methodologically, Jackson utilizes quantitative analyses of
survey data and experiments as well as qualitative analysis of in-depth
interviews with young Black Americans ages 18 to 35 across cities like
Chicago, NYC, Atlanta, DC/Baltimore, Oakland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and
Boston to investigate both intergroup and intragroup differences in responses
to threat.
Research Grants and Awards
Selected Research Grants
APSA
Centennial Grant, “Building an Academic Pipeline” for Jr. WOC in Political
Science, 2020 – 2022 (co-PIs: Melina Juarez, Danielle Lemi, and Diane Wong)
$25,000
Tenth
Decade Project Grant, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, “Race, Risks, and
Responses” policing and threat survey research, 2020-2021 (PI: Jenn M. Jackson)
$20,000
CUSE
Seed Grant, Syracuse University, “Race, Risks, and Responses” policing and
threat interview field work, 2020 – 2022 (PI: Jenn M. Jackson) $5,000
Selected Professional Activities
Jackson has served as
co-editor on the “Freedom Dreams” symposium hosted at Social Science Quarterly.
She has also served as a peer reviewer for Social Science Quarterly (SSQ),
National Review of Black Politics (NRBP), Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and
Politics (JREP), Politics, Groups, and Identities (PGI), GLQ: A Journal of
Lesbian and Gay Studies (GLQ), Feminist Formations, Scholar and Feminist
(Barnard).