Jessica Calvanico

Jessica Calvanico studies how histories of sexuality, race, and class converge to create a carceral system of girlhood by exploring the historical foundations of the juvenile justice system in the southern United States. She earned her Ph.D. in feminist studies at University of California, Santa Cruz.

Publications:

• “Arson Girls, Match-strikers, and Firestarters: A Reflection on Rage, Racialization, and the Carcerality of Girlhood.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, volume 47, number 2, winter 2022.
• “The Carceral Gaze of Girlhood: Sexualization, Whiteness, and the Storyville Girls.” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory (under review)
• “’Proud to be Among the Very First to Desegregate:’ Imagining/Managing Racial Difference, Black Girlhood, and Catholicism at New Orleans’s House of the Good Shepherd.” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth (in preparation)

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• “Comic Arts Scholarship & Teaching: A Free Open-Source Portal for Imagining an Inclusive Ethics in Curriculum and Pedagogy,” Speculative Futures and Education Symposium, UC Riverside, 2019
• “The House of the Good Shepherd and New Orleanian Girlhood at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Woest Lecture Series, The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2018
• “Carceral Girlhood and the Foundations of Juvenile Justice,” Annual Meeting of the Soroptimist International of the Americas-Sierra Pacific Region, 2018

Previous Organizations: 

• UC Santa Cruz
• Sonoma State University

Accomplishments:

• Dissertation Completion Fellowship, The Humanities Institute, UC Santa Cruz
• Bettina Aptheker Award for the Study of Gender, Sexual, and Racial Violence
• Speculative Future Research Grant, UC Humanities Research Institute