Jane McCamant
Social Sciences Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology and the College, University of Chicago
I am a cultural sociologist specializing in morality, religion, and education. I earned my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2020. I am also a graduate of Chicago’s MAPSS and hold a B.A. in geosciences and maritime studies from Williams College.
I am currently working on my first book, tentatively titled "Schooling the People of God: Hierarchy, Identity, and Moral Authority in Roman Catholic Schools in Postwar Chicago.” The manuscript focuses on the experiences of Catholic school teachers and administrators who innovated Catholic moral theology in their classrooms and in the professional organizations they shared with their public school counterparts. The project is grounded in the archives of the Archdiocese of Chicago, the National Catholic Education Association, and the papers of Catholic educational thinkers.
All of my research concerns processes of moral formation—and the institutions and knowledge systems that are concerned with moral formation—with a particular emphasis on how the boundary between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’ has been constructed in educational settings in the twentieth-century United States. Within sociology my interests span the sociologies of culture and knowledge, work and occupations, and social theory. I also have particular interests in the history and philosophy of the humanistic social sciences, moral and educational philosophy, and the history of American educational institutions. Before graduate school, I spent many years teaching oceanography, earth science, and maritime studies to students at the Sea Education Association, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and I remain interested in all things nautical.
I have taught courses in the global history of social theory, Western political thought, maritime history, and environmental anthropology.
I am currently working on my first book, tentatively titled "Schooling the People of God: Hierarchy, Identity, and Moral Authority in Roman Catholic Schools in Postwar Chicago.” The manuscript focuses on the experiences of Catholic school teachers and administrators who innovated Catholic moral theology in their classrooms and in the professional organizations they shared with their public school counterparts. The project is grounded in the archives of the Archdiocese of Chicago, the National Catholic Education Association, and the papers of Catholic educational thinkers.
All of my research concerns processes of moral formation—and the institutions and knowledge systems that are concerned with moral formation—with a particular emphasis on how the boundary between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’ has been constructed in educational settings in the twentieth-century United States. Within sociology my interests span the sociologies of culture and knowledge, work and occupations, and social theory. I also have particular interests in the history and philosophy of the humanistic social sciences, moral and educational philosophy, and the history of American educational institutions. Before graduate school, I spent many years teaching oceanography, earth science, and maritime studies to students at the Sea Education Association, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and I remain interested in all things nautical.
I have taught courses in the global history of social theory, Western political thought, maritime history, and environmental anthropology.