Research interests:

Areas of specialization include social movements and social change, social inequality (race, class, gender, sexuality), historical/comparative sociology, qualitative methods, and environmental sociology. I have also worked in the areas of moral panic and HIV/AIDS education.

Recent projects:

On the Right Side of History: How Gay and Lesbian Activists Galvanized Culture and Politics to Make Massachusetts the First US State to Legalize Same-sex Marriage. (Dissertation)

Through the analysis of Massachusetts newspaper reports, archival material, and interviews with lesbian and gay movement leaders, my dissertation explores the social and political factors in Massachusetts that enabled this state to emerge from the 1990s without a Defense of Marriage Act in place, win a legal battle to establish legal same-sex marriage in 2003, and subsequently fight off multiple attempts to establish an amendment that would have overturned the affirmative same-sex marriage ruling.  This study illuminates the interaction between culture, structure, and agency in social movement activism and underscores the critical importance of engaging political structures, employing broad-based cultural tropes, and making informed strategic decisions to advance movement success. 

Publications:

(Forthcoming) McCauley, Jaime. 2012. “From Boston Marriage to Marriage Equality:  How Massachusetts Resisted the United States Gay Marriage Panic” in the Ashgate Research Companion to Moral Panics edited by Charles Krinsky.

Brooke, Catherine L., Barry D. Adam, Jaime McCauley, and Sandra Bortolin. 2010. “Perceptions of HIV risk among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth.” Our Schools, Our Selves 19 (2):39-54.

Future interests:

Movements for immigration reform and/or immigrant rights (i.e. the DREAM Act and social movement strategy during times of constricting political opportunities).

Environmental movements (i.e. strategic alliance building in communities mobilizing against mountaintop removal coal mining who must balance economic need with environmental justice).