Jessica Taft
Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science, Fordham University
About Me
Dr. Jessica K. Taft’s research agenda focuses on the political lives of children and youth in North and South America. More specifically, she writes about youth activism and the ways that girls, children, and youth participate in social movements. Theoretically, she draws from intersectional feminism to illuminate how age functions as an axis of power and inequality in complex relation with other social differences. Her work explores how discourses about what it means to be a child, or a youth, or an adult shape the ways people experience and navigate these categories. Building on the important contributions of Latin American social movements and critical approaches to childhood, her work challenges the naturalization of adults’ power over children and aims to further our understanding of how young people can (and should) be included in democratic social and political life.
She is the author of Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas (NYU Press, 2011) and The Kids Are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru’s Movement of Working Children (NYU Press, 2019) as well as numerous articles related to youth movements and youth organizing. She also serves as a series co-editor for the NYU Press book series, Critical Perspectives on Youth.
youth activism, intergenerational dynamics, adultism, children's rights
More Information:
Selected Publications
Taft, Jessica K. 2019. The Kids Are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru’s Movement of Working Children. New York: New York University Press.
Taft, Jessica K. 2011. Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas. New York: New York University Press.
Taft, Jessica K. 2020. “Hopeful, Harmless, and Heroic: Figuring the Girl Activist as Global Savior.” Girlhood Studies 13(2): 1-17.
Taft, Jessica K. 2019. “Continually Redefining Protagonismo: The Peruvian Movement of Working Children and Political Change, 1976-2015.” Latin American Perspectives 46(5): 90-110.
Taft, Jessica K. 2017. “Teenage Girls’ Narratives of Becoming Activists.” Contemporary Social Science 12(1-2): 27-39.
Taft, Jessica K. 2015. “Adults Talk Too Much: Intergenerational Dialogue and Power in the Peruvian Movement of Working Children.” Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research 22(4): 460-473.
Taft, Jessica K. and Hava Gordon. 2013. “Youth Activists, Youth Councils, and Constrained Democracy.” Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice 8(1): 87-100.
Gordon, Hava and Jessica K. Taft. 2011. “Rethinking Youth Political Socialization: Teenage Activists Talk Back.” Youth & Society 43(4): 1499-1527.