Jean Halley

The Roads to Hillbrow investigates the diverse experiences of domestic and transnational migrants who have made their way to this South African community following war, economic dislocation, and the social trauma of apartheid. Authors Ron Nerio and Jean Halley weave sociology, history, memoir, and queer studies with stories drawn from more than 100 interviews.

Horse Crazy explores the meaning behind the love between girls and horses. Jean O'Malley Halley, a self-professed "horse girl," contends that this relationship and its cultural signifiers influence the manner in which young girls define their identity when it comes to gender. Halley examines how popular culture, including the "pony book" genre, uses horses to encourage conformity to gender norms but also insists that the loving relationship between a girl and a horse fundamentally challenges heteronormative and mainstream ideas of girlhood.

Seeing Straight introduces students to key concepts in gender and sexuality through the lens of privilege and power. After an accessible overview, the book asks students to examine the privilege inherent in approaching heterosexual and cisgender identities as “normal,” as well as the problems of treating queer gender and sexuality as “abnormal.”

This study weaves together Halley’s memoir with a social history of beef cows. Halley explores what life means, and how life is valued, both cow and gendered human life, and they examine the various paths taken to arrive at the now that, once, was their childhood.

This interdisciplinary textbook challenges students to see race as everyone's issue. Drawing on sociology, psychology, history, and economics, Seeing White introduces students to the concepts of white privilege and social power, and is designed to help break down some of the resistance students feel in discussing race.

Discussing issues of parent-child contact ranging from breastfeeding and sleeping arrangements to sexual abuse, Halley traces the evolution of mainstream ideas about touching between adults and children over the course of the twentieth century in the United States. Throughout, they reveal how the parent-child relationship, far from being a private or benign subject, continues as a highly contested, politicized affair of keen public interest.