Reports & Publications

Faculty: Jennifer Silva
Selected Works:

• “Resisting Despair: Narratives of Shame, Pain, and Transformation among White Working-Class Women in a Declining Coal-Mining Community,” (with Kait Smeraldo Schell) Gender & Society 34(5):736-759 (2020)
• “What if something happens? A Qualitative Study of the Hopes and Anxieties of the American Middle Class Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” (with Isabel Sawhill, Morgan Welch, and Tiffany N. Ford), Brookings Report, a collaboration with the Brookings’ Future of the Middle Class Initiative, (2020)
• American Family Diaries: Can Ethnographic Research Help Shape Public Policy? (with co-editor Aparna Mathur), American Enterprise Institute, (2019)
• We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America, Oxford University Press (2019)
• Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty, Oxford University Press (2013)
•  “Salvation or Safety Net? Converging Aspirations and Diverging Narratives of College Among Working- and Middle-Class Young Adults,” (with K. Snellman), Social Forces (2018) 
• “Consuming for an Imagined Future: Middle Class Consumer Lifestyle and Exploratory Experiences in the Transition to Adulthood,” (with M. Weinberger and J. Zavisca), Journal of Consumer Research (2017)
• “The Engagement Gap: Social Mobility and Extracurricular Participation among American Youth,” (with K. Snellman, C. Frederick, and R. Putnam), ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2015)
• “Constructing Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty,” American Sociological Review 78(4): 505-522 (2012) 
• “‘A New Generation of Women’? How Female ROTC Cadets Negotiate the Tension between Masculine Military Culture and Traditional Femininity,” Social Forces 87(2): 937-960 (2008)

Reports and Publications:

• Silva, J. M. (2023). “This thing is a joke”: How working-class young Americans make meaning out of politics in an era of distrust and isolation. KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 75, 259-281
• Silva, J. M., Carley, S., & Konisky, D. M. (2023). “I earned the right to build the next American car”: How autoworkers and communities confront electric vehicles. Energy Research & Social Science, 99, 101-111
• Silva, J. M., & Carley, S. (2022). Erasing inequality: Examining discrepancies between electronic health records and patient narratives to uncover perceived stigma and dismissal in clinical encounters. Social Science & Medicine, 286, 114-123

•  “Linking Electronic Health Records and In-Depth Interviews to Inform Efforts to Integrate Social Determinants of Health into Health Care Delivery: Protocol for a Qualitative Research Study,” (with Annemarie Hirsch; TE Durden), Journal of Medical Internet Research,  (March 11, 2022)

• “Proximity to freshwater blue space and type 2 diabetes onset: The importance of historical and economic context,” (with MN Poulsen, BS Schwartz, others), Landscape and Urban Planning, (February 18, 2021)

• “No Time to Spare: Exploring the middle-class time squeeze,” (with Tiffany Ford Morgan Welch; Isabel Sawhill); Brookings Report, (February 16, 2021)

• “Envisioning and Enacting Class Mobility: The Routine Constructions of the Agentic Self,” (with S. Corse), American Journal of Cultural Sociology (2017)