Crystal A. Jackson

Crystal A. Jackson joined the faculty of the Department of Sociology at John Jay College – City University of New York (JJC-CUNY) in August 2013. JJC is an urban commuter campus and Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in the heart of New York City whose motto is “we educate fierce advocates for justice.” Jackson’s research and teaching address the sociology of gender & sexuality, sexual labor, social justice, inequalities, and feminism. As a feminist sociologist, she also teaches Gender Studies courses and currently serves on the Gender Studies Program Advisory Committee. Jackson’s research emphasizes feminist and queer understandings of sexual labor and gender politics in the United States. Her qualitative scholarship on the history and contemporary politics of U.S. prostitution policies, sex worker rights activism, and anti-sex trafficking efforts, identifies and critiques institutionalized inequalities embedded in the criminal justice system. Crystal is co-author of The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex, and Sin in the New American Heartland (Routledge, 2010), an ethnographic exploration of the only legal sale of sex in the country, Nevada’s rural brothels. She has also studied strip club laws, attendees at an annual expo for the adult film industry, and queer adult film producers and performers. Crystal earned her PhD in sociology, with an emphasis in women's studies, from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.