Joss Greene is completing his dissertation in Sociology at Columbia University. It is entitled, “Gender Bound: Prisons and the Emergence of Modern Gender” and theorizes the relationship between race, gender, and punishment by examining the existence and resistance of gender-nonconforming people in the California prison system from 1941-2018.Joss is broadly concerned with intersectional inequality, punishment, and social change. He has published articles on transgender reentry in Social Problems, on parole board decision-making in Theoretical Criminnology, and on the social organization of sexual assault in the Annual Review of Criminology. His article on transgender reentry, “Categorical Exclusions: Racialized Gender Regulation and the Reproduction of Reentry Hardship” received the 2020 Arlene Kaplan Daniels Paper Award for the best paper on women and social justice from the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
Joss’ recent work looks at transgender organizations and experiences of transgender people of color in the labor market. An article on the rise of transgender nonprofits is currently under review. With Woods Ervin, Joss received a grant from the Collaborative to Advance Equity Through Research to conduct the first national research on transgender women of color’s experiences in the labor market. After conducting and analyzing work history interviews with 23 transgender women and femmes of color in 5 U.S. cities, Joss and Woods released a widely circulated report, policy brief, and infographic in 2020.In this moment of urgency, many are asking how we can contribute to building a more just world. Joss believes in working simultaneously on multiple fronts: in the classroom, the campus, and the community. In 2019 he received the inaugural Dr. Devon T. Wade Mentorship and Service Award from the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In collaboration with advocacy organizations, he has presented his research to California government officials at the city, county, and state level, and trained the California Board of Parole on transgender reentry. He is also a proud member of Survived and Punished NY, where he organizes to free criminalized survivors of gender violence.
More information can be found on his personal website.