Assistant Professor of Sociology
California State University, San Bernardino
Research
Gender & Sexualities Research Symposium, March 6, 2024
California State University, San Bernardino
Peer-Reviewed Articles
O’Quinn, Jamie. Erika Slaymaker, Jess Goldstein-Kral, and Kathleen Broussard. 2024. "Sociology from a Distance: Remote Interviews and Feminist Methods." Qualitative Sociology 47(1): 43-65.
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The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many aspects of life, including how social scientists develop and conduct research. Transitioning to remote interview methods was one methodological adjustment made by many qualitative researchers. In this article, we draw on in-depth interviews (N=106) and fieldnotes from three qualitative research projects conducted remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, all of which center the experiences of women across a wide range of topics. In this article, we consider the opportunities and challenges of remote interviewing as a feminist method of research, analyzing how remote interviews impact both those who participate in and conduct research. We find that remote interview methods offer potential advantages for conducting participant-centered research, as they provide an opportunity for new forms of emotional engagement and options for privacy. In addition, remote methods have the capacity to increase accessibility for both participants and researchers alike. As such, remote interview methods address several feminist methodological and epistemological concerns about qualitative social scientific research, including those related to accessibility, privacy, and relationality. We weigh these advantages with the unique challenges that remote interviewing brings, including potential technological difficulties and additional considerations regarding privacy. We conclude by discussing the future of remote interview methods and consider their ability to address structural factors that shape feminist qualitative research.​
O’Quinn, Jamie. 2021. "Mapping the Literature on Child Marriage: A Critical Engagement.” Sociology Compass 15(11): e12935.
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U.S. “child marriage”—marriage including at least one person under the age of 18—is legal and practiced in 44 states. In this article, I map the existing literature on child marriage and offer insights on how child marriage can expand our sociological understandings of marriage, gender inequality, and youth sexualities. Social scientists have almost exclusively focused on child marriage in the Global South at the expense of understanding child marriage in the Global North, which I argue reinforces racist and xenophobic narratives that cast child marriage as a non-Western social problem. The research on U.S. child marriage that does exist focuses on the consequences, rather than the causes, of child marriage, which may shift focus away from a structural understanding of how intersecting inequalities shape girls’ likelihood of getting married as minors. I position a sociology of U.S. child marriage at the intersection of sociological understandings of marriage and gender inequality and critical research on youth sexualities. I conclude by calling for intersectional research on U.S. child marriage that builds on these literatures, examining how girls’ sexualities are racialized, gendered, and classed within the institution of marriage.​
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O’Quinn, Jamie and Jessica Fields. 2020. “The Future of Evidence: Queerness in Progressive Visions of Sexuality Education.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 17(2): 175-187.
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“Evidence” has replaced “abstinence” as the idea with foundational cultural authority in sexuality education debates, policy, and practice. In a move emblematic of this shift, leading sexual health organizations proposed the Future of Sex Education (FoSE), the first national standards for evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education that exemplified the push toward scientific, evidence-based standards. We examine FoSE’s attempts to broaden the scope of traditional evidence-based sexuality education policies and how sociological feminist analyses and queer theory can advance understandings of sexuality education’s capacity to effect social change. FoSE’s reliance on scientific evidence reinforces future-orientated narratives of (queer) youth sexuality and considers the possibilities and limitations these narratives suggest for young people’s sexual subjectivities. A theory of queer utopias complicates FoSE’s understandings of science, education, and the future, generating a queer utopic sexuality education that allows room for ambivalence and ambiguity in young people’s sexualities.
Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters
O’Quinn, Jamie and Cayden Goldstein-Kral.* 2024. “Sex on the Streets and in the Margins: Homelessness, Sexual Citizenship, and Justice.” Invited book chapter in Outskirts: Queer Experiences on the Fringe, edited by D’Lane Compton and Amy Stone. New York: NYU Press.
* Denotes Equal Authorship
Awards: 2021 Graduate Student Paper Award, Sexual Behavior, Politics, and Communities Division, Society for the Study of Social Problems.
In this chapter, we use homelessness as a case study for understanding the construction and contestation of sexual citizenship in the United States, or the legal recognition and social belonging that is constructed through the validation and exclusion of sexual identities, rights, and practices. Currently, there is no place in the United States for people experiencing homelessness to legally have sex, effectively excluding them from accessing sexual citizenship. We explore homelessness and sex through three distinct justice frameworks: the legal “justice” system, reproductive justice, and intimate justice. In doing so, we delineate how prior movements for sexual rights often hinge upon appeals to normativity, paradoxically pitting some groups’ access to rights against people who face marginalities, such as people experiencing homelessness. We argue that, in contrast to a rights-based framework, a framework of sexual justice includes people experiencing homelessness by aiming to achieve holistic dignity, safety, and autonomy for all.
O’Quinn, Jamie. 2019. “Child marriage and Sexual Violence in the United States.” Pp. 191-205 in Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 25. Bingley: Emerald.
Child marriage, or marriage between two individuals when one or both are under the age of 18, is legal and practiced in 48 US states. Despite this, child marriage is commonly understood as only occurring in the Global South. Child marriage laws shed light on the paradoxical policies that most US states enforce regarding young people’s sexual agency. By legalizing sex between adults and minors within the institution of marriage, child marriage provides exception to statutory rape laws, which classify sex between minors and adults as sexual violence. In this chapter, I draw on feminist and queer theories to critically examine the racialized and gendered effects of these contradictory state policies. First, I analyze US age of consent laws’ reliance on an adult/child binary that constructs adults and minors as essentially and radically different. Second, I explore efforts to challenge the adult/child binary, looking at how frameworks for understanding sexual violence that are rooted in an adult/child binary can exacerbate young people’s vulnerability to sexual violence. Third, I discuss feminist efforts to theorize sexual violence outside of binary logics and their implications for research on child marriage. I conclude by discussing areas for future research on child marriage that attend to the racialized and gendered inequalities that undergird the state regulation of youth sexualities.
Book Reviews
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Manuscripts In Progress
O’Quinn, Jamie. "'Kind of a Loaded Question for a Survey': Rethinking the Role of Demographic Surveys in Qualitative Interviews."
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O'Quinn, Jamie. "'How do I Get Out of Here?': Early Marriage as an Escape from Family Violence."
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