Born and raised in Memphis, Jessica Marie Shotwell is a Doctoral Candidate and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Jessica was recently awarded a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she will continue her research at the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies (2025-2027). Jessica's areas of expertise are race, class, gender, social inequality, intersectionality, health, education, and theory. Jessica employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to carry out her research program. Her research has been supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Jessica's work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, and public sociology magazines.

Jessica developed the critical anti-capitalist intersectional framework, which emphasizes an analysis of racial capitalism that has been overlooked in intersectional sociological research. She puts her framework into praxis by conducting in-depth interviews to examine Black women's memories of coping with stress in U.S. public middle school. In her dissertation, Jessica theorizes that intersectionality research on academic experiences has pushed a logic of upward mobility that oftentimes does not work for Black girls. Connecting the common social psychological-stress models' underlying racial capitalist logic of productivity to U.S. education’s logic of upward mobility, Jessica finds that we as Black feminist and intersectional sociologists tend to understand coping processes on a scale toward success. That is, these logics view an individual’s educational experience on an upward scale toward being a successful, productive student. Her findings reveal non-normative coping processes as they occur in U.S. public education, yet also as they exist outside of the restrictive, racial capitalist logic of productivity.

 

Areas of Interest

  • Race, class, and gender
  • Black feminism and intersectionality
  • Health
  • Education
  • Theory
  • Methodologies

Degrees

  • MA
    Sociology
  • BS
    Sociology

Awards

  • 2020-03-31
    National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
  • 2022-10-18
    National Science Foundation Facilitation Award for Scientists and Engineers
  • 2020-04-20
    Honorable Mention, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship
  • 2019-03-20
    Honorable Mention, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship
  • 2024-04-04
    BSOS Dean's Research Initiative Award
  • 2023-04-07
    BSOS Dean's Research Initiative Award
  • 2022-04-21
    BSOS Dean's Research Initiative Award
  • 2022-05-13
    BSOS Dean's Fellowship
  • 2021-04-20
    BSOS Dean's Fellowship
  • 2018-08-06
    BSOS Dean's Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship
  • 2018-08-06
    Department of Sociology Summer Fellowship
  • 2018-02-20
    Graduate Fellows Award, The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi

Research

  • Critical anti-capitalist intersectional framework
  • The structural conditions and systemic issues that shape racial health disparities
  • Black women and girls’ lived experiences in education
Headshot of Dr. Jessica Marie Shotwell smiling with her arms crossed. She has long brown bohemian braids and is wearing a green and white dress with gold rings and a gold bracelet.
1103A Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building
Department of Sociology
Email
jshotwel [at] umd.edu