[8] She won the 2010 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award, Race, Gender, and Class Section, American Sociological Association.
[10] Miller was also a finalist for the 2008 C. Wright Mills Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems, for Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence (NYU Press, 2008).
In addition, much of her work follows another line of research that focuses on females in gangs, as well as victimization experiences of urban African American girls.
Miller states that the "...[Helpless] victim characteristic of early writings on girls in gangs and women who offend has been replaced by a 'resisting' one.
I am grateful because it significantly advances our understand of female street gang members, because the research was so deliberately designed to yield comparative findings about these young women, because the author's gendered perspectives is both palatable and informative, because the volume covers a host of issues I've long felt were important in gang research generally, and because the author uses her respondents' own words to illustrate her discoveries.
In addition, this approach has allowed me to make important contributions about both overlaps and differences in girls' and boys' experiences within gangs.
My hope is that the insights provided here, and those drawn from feminist scholarship in the other disciplines, will help frame the parameters of future research—bridging the gender similarities/differences divide and documenting girls' victimization, resistance, and agency in ways that capture their full humanity.In this article, "Violence Against Urban African American Girls: Challenges for Feminist Advocacy" (in the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice.
24: 148–162), Miller begins the article with an opening statement of how the pioneering effects of second wave feminism have problematized the issues relating to violence against women.
Second wave radical feminism moves to problematize violence against women have undoubtedly succeeded based on what Miller calls stakeholders, for whom are the academics, politicians, policy makers and other practitioners that claim this problem as their own.
Miller's argument draws on a qualitative study/investigation that she had recently completed (in 2008) on violence against adolescent African American girls in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods.
This means offering remedies that attend to the root causes of urban disadvantage, addressing the resultant costs and consequences and also improving institutional support for challenging gender inequalities and strengthening young women's efficacy" (pg.
―Gendered Carceral Regimes in Sri Lanka: Colonial Laws, Post-Colonial Practices, and the Social Control of Sex Workers.‖ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
Detailing how Sri Lanka's Methsevana State House of Detention serves as a "site of gendered social control," Jody Miller and Kristin Carbone-Lopez "trace how vestiges of British colonial law intersect with Sinhala Buddhist nationalism, militarization, and the gendered liberalization of Sri Lanka's economy to heighten national anxieties about women's sexuality and sexual practices, culminating in penal excesses directed at those engaged in commercial sex.
This article investigates the complex and contradictory ways in which gender identity, sexuality, and desire are configured in nachchi understandings of their lives in Sri Lanka.
Particularly in the context of transactional sexual exchanges, we investigate the intersections of economics, desire, stigma and exploitation in shaping nachchi experiences.
I draw from data collected during a multi-year field study to analyze and compare those understandings of sex tourism and CSEC driven by local "moral crusaders"—which dominated policy and public discussion—with the experiences of adolescent boys and young men who participated in these markets.
Specifically, the author examines the relationship between cultural definitions of gender/sexuality and the implementation of existing legal frameworks and its impact on the treatment and experiences of sex workers.
(Special Issue on Contemporary Street Ethnography) During her tenure as a Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (1998–2010), Miller began a new line of research examining the commercial sex trade in Sri Lanka, a notable location in South Asia for sex tourists seeking young children as their victims.
Immediately following the devastating tsunami, Miller began private fundraising relief efforts, which sequentially lead to colleague Dr. Bob Bursik donating his trademark ponytail to her cause; a local charity event that raised $4,000.
Working closely with colleague Dr. Joel Glassman and staff at the Center for International Studies, have developed the University of Missouri-St. Louis Tsunami Reconstruction Project.
There is a serious attempt here, in the author's words, 'to expand feminist accounts of female offenders by providing a nuanced portrayal of the complex gender experiences of girls in gangs.