BIOGRAPHY
CJ Pascoe is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon where she teaches courses on sexuality, education, social psychology, and gender. She is also co-editor of the academic journal, Socius. Her current research focuses on young people and inequality.
Her book, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, won the American Educational Research Association’s 2007 Book of the Year Award as well as an honorable mention for the American Sociological Association's Section on Sex and Gender’s Distinguished Book Award. Dude documents the relationship between homophobic bullying and
masculinity in high school. In it CJ suggests ways we might begin to redefine gender norms that are damaging to both boys and girls. In her recent volume co-edited with Tristan Bridges, Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Continuity and Change CJ continues to explore changes in American definitions of manhood and masculinity.
Before coming to University of Oregon, CJ taught at Colorado College and worked as a postdoctoral scholar with U.C. Berkeley's Digital Youth Project, part of the MacArthur Foundation’s initiative in learning and new media. Along with her co-researchers and under the leadership of Mimi Ito, CJ co-authored Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media, a qualitative study of young people's new media use.
She lectures widely to academic and public audiences on contemporary issues facing young people and schools such as bullying, harassment, gender inequality, LGBTQ youth and homophobia. CJ’s research has been featured in multiple documentaries and media outlets such as Frontline, National Public Radio, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Toronto Globe and Mail and Inside Higher Ed. She has also worked with and advised various organizations such as The Born This Way Foundation, True Child, and The Gay/Straight Alliance Network to translate academic research into policy and programming for young people.
CJ is currently working on three projects: conducting fieldwork for her new book on inequality in high school, examining homophobia in online spaces and interviewing GLBTQ young people about their life experiences. She continues to write about bullying, homophobia, LGBTQ young people and contemporary shifts in definitions masculinity.
She received her B.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University in 1996 and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006.