Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, 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 seeks a tenure-track assistant professor position in a Sociology, Women and Gender Studies, or African American/Black Studies department. Jessica's areas of expertise are race, class, gender, social inequality, intersectionality, health, education, and theory.
Jessica developed the theoretical framework of a critical Black feminist sociological lens, which emphasizes an analysis of racial capitalism that has been overlooked in intersectional sociological research. Jessica puts her lens into praxis by studying Black women's memories of coping with minority stress in the form of discipline and punishment in U.S. public middle school.
Jessica's dissertation provides theoretical critique, methodological offerings, and empirical findings in her dissertation, contributing to a marginal body of research on Black girls’ mental health experiences in education. More specifically, Jessica theorizes that intersectionality’s current use to examine the structural mechanisms that affect Black girls’ academic achievement results in confining intersectional research within a logic of upward mobility that oftentimes does not work for Black girls. Connecting the minority stress model’s 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, specifically as they occur in education, on a scale toward success. That is, both logics view an individual’s educational experience on an upward scale toward being a successful, productive student. Jessica's findings reveal unconventional coping and non-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
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MASociology
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BSSociology
Awards
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2020-03-31National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
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2022-10-18National Science Foundation Facilitation Award for Scientists and Engineers
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2020-04-20Honorable Mention, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship
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2019-03-20Honorable Mention, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship
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2024-04-04BSOS Dean's Research Initiative Award
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2023-04-07BSOS Dean's Research Initiative Award
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2022-04-21BSOS Dean's Research Initiative Award
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2022-05-13BSOS Dean's Fellowship
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2021-04-20BSOS Dean's Fellowship
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2018-08-06BSOS Dean's Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship
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2018-08-06Department of Sociology Summer Fellowship
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2018-02-20Graduate Fellows Award, The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi
Research
- Critical Black feminist sociological lens
- The structural conditions and systemic issues that shape racial health disparities
- Black women and girls’ experiences with racism in education
