Bio

Jessica Calarco is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an award-winning teacher and an expert on inequalities in family life and education.

Calarco’s latest book, Holding It Together (Portfolio/Penguin, 2024), reveals how we force women to be America’s social safety net, what the weight of that responsibility is doing to women, and why so many Americans believe the myth that we’re doing just fine. The book combines historical and policy analyses with original survey data and vivid portraits drawn from more than 400 hours of interviews with families from a wide range of backgrounds.

Calarco’s first book, Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School (Oxford, 2018), received the Pierre Bourdieu Award for best book in the Sociology of Education. Her book Qualitative Literacy: A Guide to Evaluating Ethnographic and Interview Research (University of California, 2022) is coauthored with Sociologist Mario Luis Small, and won the Outstanding Publication Award for best book in Methodology. Calarco is also the author of A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum.

As an active public scholar and the recipient of numerous early career and teaching awards, Calarco strives to make sociological insights accessible and relevant to broad audiences. She not only publishes in leading sociology and interdisciplinary journals but also writes for high-profile media outlets—including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Inside Higher Ed, CNN, and NBC News—and offers workshops related to her research and teaching, including workshops aimed at promoting equity and empathy in college and graduate education.

Calarco received a PhD in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Sociology and Education from Brown University. She is represented by Margo Beth Fleming of the Brockman Literary Agency.