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Faculty

Jean Williams (Department Chair)
American Politics, Social Welfare Policy, Cultural Politics

Contact Information
Office: Building 47, Room 14C
Phone: 805-756-5717
E-mail: jemwilli@calpoly.edu

I earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1998, with a focus on social welfare policy, urban politics, and cultural politics, particularly the politics of race, class, and gender. My research and teaching remain in these areas. I teach the following courses for the department: POLS 459: The Politics of Poverty, POLS 419: Social Movements and Political Protest, POLS 310: The Politics of Ethnicity and Gender, POLS 375: California Politics, POLS 180: Political Inquiry, and POLS 338: Critical Issues in American Politics. I have also taught WS 301: Introduction to Women's Studies for the Women's Studies Program, and am a member of the Women's Studies Advisory Board on campus.

Several of my classes include a service learning component, providing students opportunities to learn both inside and outside the classroom. In The Politics of Poverty, for example, I integrate classroom-based instruction with experiential learning by arranging for students to volunteer at the local homeless shelter; students spend the night as shelter worker volunteers. This dovetails nicely with my commitment to work with many of the local antipoverty and homeless organizations in SLO. Last October, I worked with the county Homeless Services Council to complete a first-ever count of the homeless population. We were able to uncover important demographic information about the homeless in SLO County that we hope will improve services for the homeless here.

My most recent research has been in two different areas: homelessness and sex education policy. For my research on homelessness, I am interested both in policy efforts and in the response of grassroots homeless organizations to homelessness policy. One of my recent projects examined a homeless social movement organization's role in city politics, analyzing the group's political organizing strategies and tactics, its relationships with elites, and the outcomes of its efforts to change local homelessness policy. My analysis revealed the extreme social and political marginalization experienced by groups like the homeless; such marginalization translates to a precarious and sometimes limited form of grassroots activism.

In addition to homeless social movement organizations, I am interested in the policy alternatives constructed to address women's homelessness, and homeless women's assessment of these efforts. I have written a book, "A Roof Over My Head": Homeless Women and the Shelter Industry--and am currently writing a book chapter--addressing these questions, with a particular emphasis on the role of domestic violence in explaining women's homelessness. These publications focus on the voices of homeless women themselves to critique both the social construction of and policy responses to homelessness.

For the past year, I've been working on a coauthored book with Alesha Doan that analyzes sex education policy, critiquing the abstinence-only curricula that have received so much attention (and funding) in the past several years. The book, The Politics of Virginity: Abstinence in Sex Education, will be published by Praeger. We analyze five leading abstinence-only curricula, investigating what lessons they teach teens about gender and sexuality. We completed interviews with teenage women to assess their experiences with and interpretations of abstinence education, in the context of their perceptions and analyses of their own sexual experiences and sexualities.

Publications