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Shannon Jette

Shannon Jette

Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kinesiology

Dr. Jette's research focuses on social, cultural and historical aspects of knowledge production in the disciplines of kinesiology, medicine and public health. She is particularly interested in studying exercise and fitness practices as technologies of health that have the potential to shape how we understand and experience our bodies.

Dr. Jette runs the THINC lab and is part of the NatureRx@UMD Laboratory at UMD. 

Contact

jette@umd.edu

SPH 2363

(301) 405-2497

Departments/Units

Areas of Interest

Core Faculty

Science and Technology Studies; Gender Studies; Sociology of health and illness

Dr. Jette received her MA (2004) and PhD (2009) in Kinesiology from the University of British Columbia and conducted postdoctoral research at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec before coming to the University of Maryland in August 2011. Her graduate and postdoctoral research were funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Dr. Jette uses a range of qualitative research methodologies (including media and discourse analysis, in-depth interviews, focus groups, ethnographic techniques) to examine: the production of knowledge about gender, health and physical activity; how this knowledge has been (and is) put to use in the operation of power in differing socio-historical contexts; and how individuals, especially those from marginalized groups, negotiate various health-related messages. Much of her work focuses upon the relationship between women's health and physical activity/movement in the context of the 'obesity epidemic' and she is also interested in the growing use of fitness and exercise technologies in physical education classes.

MA (2004) and PhD PhD Kinesiology (2009) University of British Columbia

KNES 285: History of Physical Culture, Sport, and Science in America;

KNES 400: Foundations of Public Health in Kinesiology;

KNES 615: Body, Culture, and Physical Activity

Graduate Faculty Mentor of the Year (2020)

Selected peer-reviewed journals:

Esmonde, K., & Jette., S. (accepted 2021, in press). ‘We are not a nation of softies, but we could become one’: Exploring the materiality of fitness testing in the President’s Council on Youth Fitness. Somatechnics.

Posbergh, A., & Jette, S. (accepted 2021, in press). “Track’s coed, I never thought of it as separate”: Challenging, reproducing, and negotiating gender stereotypes in track and field. Sociology of Sport Journal.

Jette, S., Esmonde, K., & Maier, J. (2019 available online). Exploring prenatal physical activity at the ‘postgenomic turn’: A transdisciplinary journey. Leisure Sciences, 41(1-2), 36-53. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2018.1539683

Jette, S., Maier, J., Esmonde, K., & Davis, C. (2017). Promoting prenatal exercise from a sociocultural and life-course perspective: An “embodied” conceptual framework, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 88(3), 269-281.

Selected book chapters:

Jette, S., & Esmonde, K. (2020). The (in)active body multiple: An examination of how prenatal exercise ‘matters’. In M. MacDonald & J. Sterling (Eds.), Sports, society and technology anthology. Palgrave Macmillan.

Jette, S., Esmonde, K., Andrews, D., & Pluim, C. (2020). Big bodies, big data: Unpacking the Fitnessgram® black box. In J. Newman, H. Thorpe, & D. Andrews (Eds.), Sport, physical culture, and the moving body: Materialisms, technologies, ecologies (pp. 131-150) Rutgers University Press.