Professor of the Practice in Sociology
Society and Politics Department
Education
Ph.D. (2022) Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
M.A. (2017) Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
B.A. (2012) Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara
About
Her research explores the methods members of society use to (re)produce and manage situated problems that emerge as a feature of their (perceived) category memberships. Looking to both the US and Europe, specifically Germany, she has worked on how nationalist and populist politics come to be negotiated in the face of large- and small-scale resistance. Similarly, she has examined the practices used by self-identified and other-ascribed White nationalists to evade accountability associated with the identification. At the heart of her work, both is a concern with the way people manage expectations for “appropriate conduct” tied to social identities and categories, whether in evading or enforcing those expectations.
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Sterphone, J., Jessica Robles, Jack B. Joyce, Natalie Flint, M. J. Hill, Q. A. Ellis. 2026. “Rendering White nationalism defeasible in interaction.” British Journal of Social Psychology 65(2): 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.70074
Sterphone, J. 2022. “Complaining by category: managing social categories and action ascriptions in war game interactions.” Language & Communication 84: 46-60.
Sterphone, J. 2022. “Negotiating the Mainstream: Mitigated Rejections of Far-Right Policy Proposals in Bundestag Debates.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 26(3): 335-361. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12551
Sterphone, J. 2021. “On the relevance and consequentiality of Muslim as a social category in pre-unification Germany.” Patterns of Prejudice 54(4): 367-391.
Sterphone, J. 2021. “The New Nationalism? Antecedents of the Alternative für Deutschland’s Islamfeindlichkeit [Islamophobia].” German Politics and Society 38(4): 28-50.
Daniel, G. Reginald and J Sterphone. 2019. “Shame, Anti-Semitism, and Hitler’s Rise to Power in Germany.” EC Psychology and Psychiatry 8(5): 334-345.
Joyce, Jack and J Sterphone. 2022. “Challenging racism in public spaces: practices for interventions into disputes.” Journal of Pragmatics 201: 43-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2022.09.001
Scheff, Thomas J., G. Reginald Daniel, and J Sterphone. 2018. “Shame and a theory of war and violence.” Aggression and Violent Behavior, 39: 109-115.
Books
Romo, Rebecca, G. Reginald Daniel, and J Sterphone. 2024. Between Black and Brown: Blaxicans and Multiraciality in Comparative Historical Perspective. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Chapters in Edited Volumes
Daniel, G. Reginald and J Sterphone. In press. “Hypodescent,” Routledge Resources Online—Race and Racism, John Solomos, ed. Routledge.
Sterphone, J. 2019. “‘Mut zu Deutschland!’ [Courage for Germany] On the National Populism of Alternative für Deutschland”, pp. 99-115 in Populist Nationalism in Europe and the Americas, Fernando Lopez-Alves and Diane Johnson, eds. New York: Routledge.
Teaching Interests
As an instructor, I most enjoy engaging students flexibly across disciplinary and topical boundaries. Sociology was not built from thin air, but by borrowing from and leaning on other disciplines. So, too, must we lean on others in order to develop our own understanding of the social world! No matter the course, though, you can expect that we will be engaging with course materials empirically—looking to see what people do in the world and how they accomplish it. Unsurprisingly, you might expect to find some interactional sociology seeping into any course you take with me in one way or another, even if that is simply an invitation to remember that for all the power social structure has, we are still agents making decisions in the world!
Research Interests
I have a strong and ongoing research agenda that has involved students successfully in all stages of the process, from data collection to publication. I welcome any and all interest in joining one of my ongoing projects.
My research interests are specifically focused on the interactional (re)production of social life in all of its expressions. While the majority of my recent projects have focused on the practices through which members of society (re)produce and manage the implications of race and racism, I have a number of prior and ongoing projects on other topics. These have included ways that people manage accountability during board game playing, trouble that emerges during questioning of witnesses in court rooms, how people intervene in public disputes, and how people manage 911 calls. At the heart of all of these projects is a concern with how people manage the consequences of being seen to be one type of person or another.
