Jean Halley


Jean Halley is an American writer and sociologist based in New York City. Her work revolves around issues of social power, violence, white privilege, queer theory, animal studies, and trauma. Halley is also a professor of sociology at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Early life and education

Halley was born in 1967, in Washington DC and grew up in Wyoming and Montana. She attended Colorado College and received her bachelor's degree in psychology, with minors in Spanish and women's studies, in 1989. She earned her master's degree in theology at Harvard University in 1992 and her doctorate in sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2003.

Career

Halley frequently uses elements of memoir in relating the topics of her books to her own biography. Her book about touching children, breastfeeding, children's sleep and contemporary childrearing advice, ' was published in July 2007 by the University of Illinois Press. With Patricia Ticineto Clough, Halley coedited ' in 2007. In her autoethnographic piece in that volume, Halley challenges traditional modes of storytelling that develop in linear fashion and that use binary oppositions as a way of describing or knowing the world.
In 2011, she co-authored with Amy Eshleman and Ramya Vijaya. Her fourth book ' was published in 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan. In this book, Halley weaves together a social history of the American beef cattle industry, with her memoir of growing up in Wyoming in the shadow of her grandfather's cattle business.
Halley co-authored her fifth book, ', with Amy Eshleman. The book was published in 2017 by Rowman & Littlefield. Halley has published numerous scholarly articles and in popular literary magazines including Harper's Magazine and The Antioch Review. She has given interviews on multiple radio stations including NPR and Northern Spirit Radio.
As a child and young adult, Halley spent much of her time horseback riding in the Rocky Mountains. Her most recent book, published in 2019 with the University of Georgia Press explores the passion many girls have for horses. Halley has won a number of awards for teaching and civic engagement and sits on the board of Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, published by the University of California Press.