Faculty Associate
Affiliated with: The Public Policy Program
Office: HW 1648
Phone: (212) 772-5578
Email: csmiley@hunter.cuny.edu
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Bio:
CalvinJohn Smiley received his Ph.D. from The Graduate Center-CUNY in 2014. His work focuses on the intricacies and complications of prisoner reentry for urban inhabitants. More specifically, his research seeks out how men and women navigate and negotiate reentry space, moving from confinement to community, with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas. His dissertation focused on residents of Newark, New Jersey who were in the early stages of their reentry process transitioning from prison to halfway houses to community. Smiley’s work is critical of the glaring contradiction in the ways citizenship is simultaneously given and taken away from persons with a felony conviction. In other words, the state creates a unique type of citizenry for those who have been incarcerated; individuals are concurrently an in-group and out-group. He is currently working on a book proposal based on his research.
Recent Publications:
Battle, Juan and CalvinJohn Smiley. (2018) “Familia Y Educación: A Quantitative Assessment of the Impact of Parental Configuration on Educational Attainment for a National Sample of Latinx Students” Race Ethnicity and Education.
Hayes, Rebecca, Katharina J. Joosen, & CalvinJohn Smiley. (2018) “Black Petes & Black Crooks? Racial Stereotyping and Offending in the Netherlands”-Contemporary Justice Review, 21(1), 16-32.
Smiley, CalvinJohn. (2017) “Addict Rap?: The Shift from Drug Distributor to Drug Consumer in Hip-Hop” – Journal of Hip-Hop Studies, 4(1), 94-117.
Middlemass, Keesha M. & CalvinJohn Smiley. (2016). “Doing a Bid: The Construction of Time as Punishment,” The Prison Journal 96(6), 793-813.
Middlemass, Keesha M. & CalvinJohn Smiley. (2016). “Jumpsuit to Button-Down: Clothing used as Resistance in Prisoner Reentry,” Journal of Criminal Justice and Law Review, 5:1-2, 63-80.
Smiley, CalvinJohn. (2016). “Can I Sit? The Use of Public Space and the Other,” Tijdschrift over Cultuur & Criminaliteit, 6:1, 66-81.
Smiley, CalvinJohn & Keesha M. Middlemass. (2016). “Clothing Makes the Man: Impression Management and Prisoner Reentry,” Punishment & Society, 18:2, 220-243.
Smiley, CalvinJohn & David Fakunle. (2016). “From ‘Brute’ to ‘Thug’: The Demonization and Criminalization of Unarmed Black Male Victims in America,” Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 26:3-4, 350-366.
Smiley, CalvinJohn. 2015. “From Silence to Propagation: Understanding the Relationship between ‘Stop Snitchin’ and ‘YOLO’ Deviant Behavior,” 36:1, 1-16.
Current Projects:
Much of my current research is tackling issues of prisoner reentry including: reentry and clothing, reentry and spousal selection, and reentry and time. In addition to my work on prisoner reentry, I have studied issues in popular culture, particularly hip-hop music, social media spaces, and current social issues (e.g., #BlackLivesMatter). My next large project is still in the early stages but will focus on human and non-human cohabitation in shared spaces of the carceral state.
Research Areas: Critical Animal Studies, Critical Race Theory, Mass incarceration, Popular Culture, Prisoner reentry, Social Media, Social Movements, Sociology of Law
