2009 - 2010
On sabbatical from Saint Mary's University
Visiting Scholar, Centre of Criminology & Sexual Diversity Studies Program, University of Toronto
Visiting Scholar & Senior Resident, Massey College, University of Toronto
Personal Profile
- Ph.D. (Sociology and Historical Studies) New
School for Social Research, 2003
- M.A (Sociology) University of
Toronto, 1990
- B. A. (Honours With Distinction, Sociology and
History), University of Toronto, 1989
My research and teaching interests center in theories and histories of how we produce and govern the self, others, group dynamics, and social spaces and institutions. I am interested in how human beings mobilize and resist ideas and tactics that differentiate and deploy people in hierarchies, and that shape the unequal distribution of resources.
The particular ideas and tactics that my research explores include those involved in how we imagine and govern urban spaces and populations, gender and sexuality, moral worth, class, race and ethnicity, citizenship, age and youth, and "crime" and "justice".
My current work is focused in two primary areas: i.) a book-length history of various forms of government in New York City through the lens of conflicts over prostitution between 1880 and 1920; and ii.) research on liberal governing which emerges from my recent SSHRC project on the 1960-1982 Canadian history of youth justice law reform and policy debates.
Selected Publications
- Michele Byers and Val Marie Johnson, "CSI as Neoliberalism: An Introduction" in Byers & Johnson (eds.), The "CSI Effect:" Television, Crime, and Governance (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009).
- Val Marie Johnson, "'Look for the moral and sex sides of the problem': Investigating Jewishness, Desire and Discipline at Macy's Department Store, 1913." Journal of the History of Sexuality 18, n.3 (September 2009): 457-485.
- Val Marie Johnson, "'The Rest Can Go to the Devil': Macy's Workers Negotiate Gender, Sex, and Class in the Progressive Era." Journal of Women's History 19, n.1 (March 2007): 32-57.
- Val Marie Johnson, "'The moral aspects of complex problems': New York City Electoral Campaigns Against Vice and the Incorporation of Immigrants, 1890-1901." Journal of American Ethnic History 25, nos.2-3 (Winter/Spring 2006): 74-106.
- Val Marie Johnson, "Policing Borders, Citizenship, and Cities: the Gendered and Racialized Inspection & Regulation of Immigrants at the Turn of the Last Century." In Uniform Behavior: Localism, Reform, and Police-Community Relationships in Modern America. Edited by Stacy K. McGoldrick, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY, 2006, 25-54.
- Val Marie Johnson, "Protection, Virtue, and 'the power to detain': the Moral Citizenship of Jewish Women in New York City, 1890-1920." Journal of Urban History 31 (2005): 655-684. Nominated by the JUH for the 2005 Berkshire Conference Article Prize.
Selected Presentations and Conferences
- "Grounding Sexual & Moral Regulation in the Political History of a City" Presented at the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, 17 November 2009, University of Toronto
- “Beyond category and lineage: what does 1960s Canadian Youth Justice Reform teach us about theories and histories of politics and law?” Presented at the Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, 13 November 2009, Long Beach CA
- "Governing Youth, Justice, and Liberalism in Canada, 1960-1971" Presented at the European Social Science History Conference, 27 February 2008, University of Lisbon.
- "New York Jewish Women's Sexual Politics and the Investigation of Macy's Department Store, 1913." Presented at Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Washington, D. C., April 2006.
- Co-Organizer (with Diane Crocker) and Participant, "The Criminalization of Poverty," 8 & 9 November, 2004 Halifax Colloquium involving academics, the Law Commission of Canada, and local community and politicians in a forum on how policing and fear of crime intersect with homelessness and housing, social services and poverty policy.
- "Seeking 'the moral law' and Citizenship: Gendered Relations of Class and Ethnicity in New York City Campaigns Against Vice." Invited Presentation, Transcending Borders: Migration, Ethnicity, and Incorporation in an Age of Globalism, New York University, 1 November, 2003.
November
2004 Program for Public Colloquim & Meeting on The
Criminalization of Poverty.
Courses Taught
- Gender & Law (Undergraduate Fall 2010)
- Urban Regulation (Undergraduate Fall 2010)
- Regulating Gender & Sexuality (Undergraduate & Graduate Winter 2011)
- Contemporary Criminological Theory (Winter 2011)
- Law & Society (Graduate; Undergraduate)
- Advanced Criminological & Sociological Theory
- Classical Criminological Theory
- Theories of Feminism (Graduate)
- Theories and Histories of Sexuality (Graduate)
- Issues in Juvenile Justice
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