Fall 07 Courses

Jessica Fields is Research Associate at the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality (CRGS) and an Associate Professor of Sociology at San Francisco State University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001. Her forthcoming book, Sexual Subjects: Sex Education’s Lessons in Social Inequality (Rutgers University Press) explores what sex education teaches middle-school students about sexual difference and inequality; intersections of sexuality, race, and gender inequalities; and their own and others’ entitlement to sexual pleasure and respect. Dr. Fields is currently the lead investigator in a participatory action research study of HIV/AIDS, incarceration, and safer sex negotiation. With funding from the Universitywide AIDS Research Program and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, university researchers, educators, and incarcerated women Jailed Women & HIV Education promises to contribute to broad efforts to illuminate and challenge the roles that incarceration, HIV/AIDS, education, and research play in women’s lives. Finally, Dr. Fields leads the San Francisco effort on Relations, an international collaborative study of race, gender, and sexuality in the lives of young adults. Project sites in this study include Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Chicago, and San Francisco. Funding for Relations comes from the Ford Foundation.

At the CRGS, Dr. Fields pursues her research program with RISE: Research in Inequality, Sexuality, and Education, a team of SFSU undergraduate and graduate student researchers from Sociology, Human Sexuality Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Psychology. At SFSU, she is an active mentor to graduate and undergraduate students and teaches courses on research methods; race, sexuality, class, and gender; youth; and sexuality education. Dr. Fields is Board President of Health Initiatives for Youth, a San Francisco-based community organization.