Penn Sociology Alumni Spotlight:
Jessica Calarco, Ph.D. (2012)
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Indiana University
Jessica Calarco, who will be our colloquium speaker on March 23, earned her doctorate from Penn Sociology in 2012. We had a chance to catch up with her to learn more about her current research and the next steps.
• Tell us a bit about your current research, and what the next significant step is.
Jessica: I am currently finishing a book manuscript that looks at how social class matters in student-teacher interactions and at how those interactions contribute to inequalities in school. The book, tentatively titled Class in the Classroom, is under contract with Oxford University Press and will likely be published in 2017. I am also working on other projects looking at social class and technology issues in college, at how social class matters in children's friendships, and at how attitudes toward children and parenting have changed over time.
• What motivates you to do the research that you are doing?
Jessica: Despite popular beliefs about the equality of opportunity in American society, we know that children's lives and outcomes vary substantially along social class lines. My goal is to understand the processes that produce those inequalities.
• Talk a bit about your time in the Penn Sociology program.
Jessica: I am tremendously grateful for the mentoring that I received at Penn. Annette Lareau was always ready with thoughtful feedback and always pushed me to aim high and work harder to achieve my goals. Grace Kao's hard-hitting insights prepared me for the challenges of publishing, surviving the job market, and succeeding in an academic career. Melissa Wilde's careful approach to research, writing, and teaching inspire me to aim for clarity and impact in my own work, as well. Randall Collins taught me to connect data to theory and to always consider the broader impact of what I found.
• Do you have any tips and/or advice for students who are seeking Ph.D.'s in Sociology?
Jessica: If you're going to reinvent the wheel, do it with your ideas and not your work process. Identify the scholars whose work inspires you, and use them as your guide. Read their work carefully. Learn from their process. Emulate their writing. Ask them what they did to succeed. But, at the same time, learn to read what others have written with a critical eye. Learn to identify not what they did wrong, but what gaps are still left to be filled. Then make those gaps your own.