Holly J. McCammon
Professor of Sociology
Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Sociology
Chair, Department of Sociology
Professor of Law (secondary appointment)
Professor of Human and Organizational Development (secondary appointment)
Editor, American Sociological Review, 2010-2015
Affiliated Faculty, American Studies and Women and Gender Studies
Holly McCammon is Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Sociology, Professor of Sociology, and Chair of the Department of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University. Her research considers U.S. women’s activism with past projects on the woman suffrage movement and women’s campaigns in the first part of the twentieth century to gain the right to sit on juries. Currently Professor McCammon investigates recent feminist litigation strategies, as the women’s movement concentrates on the courts as an arena to press for and defend legal rights. Her scholarship appears in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Mobilization, Law & Social Inquiry, Gender & Society, Social Science History, Sociological Forum, and Law & Policy. In 2012 she published The U.S. Women’s Jury Movements and Strategic Adaptation: A More Just Verdict with Cambridge University Press, and she has co-edited The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women’s Social Movement Activism (with Verta Taylor, Jo Reger, and Rachel Einwohner), 100 Years of the Nineteenth Amendment: An Appraisal of Women’s Political Activism (with Lee Ann Banaszak), and The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (with David Snow, Sarah Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi). She is past editor of the American Sociological Review (2010-2015), the recipient of the Katherine Jocher-Belle Boone Beard Award from the Southern Sociological Society, a Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Award for Research, and the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the American Association of University Women.
Specializations
Social Movements, Women's Legal Rights, Political Sociology
Representative Publications
2022. Holly J. McCammon. “A War of Words over Abortion: The Legal-Framing Contest Over the Undue Burden Standard.” Justice System Journal 43(4):623-644.
Forthcoming. Holly J. McCammon and Cathryn Beeson-Lynch. “Fighting Words” Pro-choice Cause Lawyering, Legal-Framing Innovations, and Hostile Political-Legal Contexts.” Law & Social Inquiry
2020. Holly J. McCammon, Minyoung Moon, Brittany N. Hearne, and Megan Robinson. “The Supreme Court as an Arena for Activism: Feminist Cause Lawyering’s Influence on Judicial Decision Making.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 25(2):221-244.
2019. Holly J. McCammon and Amanda J. Brockman. “Feminist Institutional Activists: Venue Shifting, Strategic Adaptation, and Winning the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.” Sociological Forum 34:5-26.
McCammon, Holly J. and Lee Ann Banaszak, editors. 2018. 100 Years of the Nineteenth Amendment: An Appraisal of Women’s Political Activism. Oxford University Press.
McCammon, Holly J., Verta Taylor, Jo Reger, and Rachel Einwohner, editors. 2017. The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women’s Social Movement Activism. Oxford University Press.
McCammon, Holly J., Allison R. McGrath, Ashley Dixon, and Megan Robinson. 2017. “Targeting Culture: Feminist Legal Activists and Critical Community Tactics.” Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change 41:243-78.
McCammon, Holly J., Erin M. Bergner, and Sandra C. Arch. 2015. “’Are You One of Those Women?’: Within-Movement Conflict, Radical Flank Effects, and Social Movement Political Outcomes.” Mobilization 20:157-78.
McCammon, Holly J. 2012. The U.S. Women’s Jury Movements and Strategic Adaptation: A More Just Verdict. New York: Cambridge University Press.
McCammon, Holly J. 2012. “Explaining Frame Variation: Moderate and More Radical Demands for Women’s Citizenship in the U.S. Women’s Jury Movements.” Social Problems 59(1): 43-69.
McCammon, Holly J., Soma Chaudhuri, Lyndi N. Hewitt, Courtney Sanders Muse, Harmony D. Newman, Carrie Lee Smith, and Teresa M. Terrell. 2008. “Becoming Full Citizens: The U.S. Women’s Jury Rights Campaigns, the Pace of Reform, and Strategic Adaptation.” American Journal of Sociology 113(4): 1104-1147.
McCammon, Holly J., Karen E. Campbell, Ellen M. Granberg, and Christine Mowery. 2001. "How Movements Win: Gendered Opportunity Structures and the State Women’s Suffrage Movements, 1866-1919." American Sociological Review 66(1): 49-70.