Faculty Profiles

Pliley, J. R., & Mckiernan, J. R. (Eds.). (n.d.). Capturing Labor: Unfree Work in the Southwest. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Pliley, J. R., & Adams, A. (n.d.). The Carceral Rescue Industry: WWI-Era Anti-Prostitution Campaigns in Texas. In Captive Labour: Troubling Unfree Labor in the Southwest. UT Press.

Mckiernan, J. R., & Pliley, J. R. (2026). Introduction: Capturing Labor. In Capturing Labor: A History of Unfree Work in the Southwest. Austin, TX, USA: University of Texas at Austin. https://doi.org/doi:10.7560/333457

Pliley, J. R. (n.d.). Protecting and Policing: Revising Rape Law, Prostitution Law and Trafficking Law in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. In The Cambridge History of Sexuality in the United States, Volume 2. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pliley, J. R., Parker, T., Rytilahti, S., & Strand, K. (2025, November 14). The Politics of ‘Audit’: How Texas Is Using Bureaucracy to Erase Gender Studies. Retrieved from https://msmagazine.com/2025/11/11/texas-gender-studies-audit-university-college-feminist-studies/

Pliley, J. R., & Barton, N. (2025, October). Finding Solidarity and Leaning into Community. CCWH Newsletter.

Pliley, J. R., & Barton, N. (2025, October). Cultivating a Legacy by Ensuring the Story Gets Told: A Profile of Brigid Wallace. CCWH Newsletter.

Pliley, J. R. (2025). Alienated Outcasts: Nullified Motherhood, Uncertain Citizenship and Family Separation at the US-Canadian Borderlands. Gender & History, 37(2).

Pliley, J. R., & Barton, N. (2025, April). Finding Hope in Turbulent Times. CCWH Newsletter.

Pliley, J. R. (n.d.). Review of “Fierce Desires” by Rachel Davis. American Historical Review.

Pliley, J. R. (2024). Federal Crimes and Policing in the Early-Twentieth Century. In The Routledge History of Crime in America (pp. 349–362). New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003300151

Pliley, J. R. (2024). Gender and Enslavement: The Global Anti-Trafficking Movement, 1885-1949. In A Cultural History of Slavery and Human Trafficking in the Age of Global Conflict: Volume 5: Global Conflict, Colonialism, and Decolonization, 1900-1945 (pp. 115–134). London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic.

Pliley, J. R. (2024). Perpetual Banishment: The Transcarceral Crimmigration Case of Mary Masako Akimoto. Gender & History, 36(2). https://doi.org/DOI:%2010.1111/1468-0424.12791

Mckiernan, J. R., & Pliley, J. R. (n.d.). Introduction: Capturing Labor: Unfree Work in the Southwest. In Capturing Labor: Unfree Work in the Southwest. UT Press.

Pliley, J. R. (2024, September). The Sex Wars: Prostitution, Carceral Feminists, and the Consolidation of Police Power. Journal of Urban History. https://doi.org/10.1177/009614422412425

Mckiernan-Gonzalez, J. R., & Pliley, J. R. (n.d.). Introduction: Capturing Labor: Unfree Work in the Southwest. Austin, TX, United States: University of Texas Press.

Pliley, J. R. (2023, May). Review of Anne Gray Fischer The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022. Pp. 312. $29.95 (cloth); $24.99 (e-book). Journal of African American History.

Pliley, J. R. (2022). Sex Trafficking in the Motor City: The Construction of an International Deportation Infrastructure in Detroit, USA, 1924-1944. In Global Labor Migration: New Directions. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.

Pliley, J. R. (2022, August 17). Sex Wars and the Consolidation of Police Power. Black Perspectives. African American Intellectual History Society. Retrieved from https://www.aaihs.org/sex-wars-and-the-consolidation-of-police-power/

Pliley, J. R. (2022, May). Mann Act. In The Federal Bureau of Investigation: History, Powers, and Controversies of the FBI (pp. 298–301). ABC-CLIO.

Pliley, J. R. (2022, May). White Slave Division. In The Federal Bureau of Investigation: History, Powers, and Controversies of the FBI (Vol. 2, pp. 491–493). ABC-CLIO.

Pliley, J. R., LeBaron, G., & Blight, D. (Eds.). (2021). Fighting Modern Day Slavery and Human Trafficking: History and Contemporary Policy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/fighting-modern-slavery-and-human-trafficking/2FBEBA3D01169D34B37BC4DCAB36BB0E

Pliley, J. R. (2021). Ambivalent Abolitionist Legacies The League of Nations’ Investigations into Sex Trafficking. In Fighting Modern Day Slavery and Human Trafficking: History and Contemporary Policy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/fighting-modern-slavery-and-human-trafficking/2FBEBA3D01169D34B37BC4DCAB36BB0E

Pliley, J. R. (2021, May). New Directions in Trafficking History: The Intersection of Intimate Labor and Migration. Immigration and Ethnic History Newsletter. Immigration and Ethnic History Newsletter. Retrieved from https://iehs.org/notable-recent-works-on-trafficking-and-migration-an-annotated-bibliography/

Pliley, J. R. (2021). The Biden Agenda. Cambridge Now. Retrieved from http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2021/03/the-biden-agenda/

Pliley, J. R. (2020, August). Forgotten Women of Baltimore. The Metropole. The Metropole: The Official Blog of the Urban History Association. Retrieved from https://themetropole.blog/2020/08/11/forgotten-women-of-baltimore-a-review-of-bawdy-city/

Pliley, J. R. (2019). Prostitutes and Prostitution in American History. In Oxford  Encyclopedia of American Urban History (pp. 430–465). New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pliley, J. R. (Ed.). (2019). Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890 - 1950: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and ‘Immorality,’ 1870 – 1940 (Paperback). New York: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://catalog.library.txstate.edu/record=b3528108~S1a

Pliley, J. R. (2019). Trafficked White Slaves and Misleading Marriages in the Campaigns Against Sex Trafficking, 1885-1927. Federal History Journal, 11.

Pliley, J. R. (2019, January). Review of The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison ‘Promiscuous’ Women by Scott W. Stern. History: Reviews of New Books. History: Reviews of New Books.

Pliley, J. R. (2019). Archival Trouble: Researching Sex Trafficking in Early Twentieth-Century America. In G. LeBaron (Ed.), Researching Forced Labour in the Global Economy: Methodological Challenges and Advances. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Pliley, J. (2018). From White Slavery to Anti-Prostitution, The Long View: Law, Policy and Sex Trafficking. In J. B. Stewart & E. Swanson (Eds.), Human Bondage and Abolition: New Histories of Past and Present Slaveries (pp. 190–220). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://catalog.library.txstate.edu/record=b4776747~S1a

Pliley, J. R. (2018). Troubling Habits, Poisons of Civilization, and State Growth. Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-gilded-age-and-progressive-era/article/troubling-habits-poisons-of-civilization-and-state-growth-lisa-mcgirr-the-war-on-alcohol-prohibition-and-the-rise-of-the-american-state-new-york-w-w-norton-co-2016-352-pp-2795-cloth-isbn-9780393066951/E34C32AB4B2039D75A48CC442E8B9725

Pliley, J. R. (2018). Prostitutes and Prostitution in American History. In B. Jon (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.121

Pliley, J. R. (2018, May 30). A Pardon Arrives 105 Years Too Late. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/a-pardon-arrives-105-years-too-late/561407/?utm_source=atltw

Pliley, J. (2017). Protecting the Young and the Innocent: Age, Consent, and the Enforcement of the White Slave Traffic Act. In A. M. Duane (Ed.), When is a Child a Slave?: An Argument for Child-Centered Slavery Studies (pp. 156–176). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pliley, J., Kramm, R., & Fischer-Tin, H. (Eds.). (2016). Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1870- 1950: Fighting Drink, Drugs, and “Immorality.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://catalog.library.txstate.edu/record=b3528108~S1a

Pliley, J. R. (2016). The FBI, Sexual Predators, and the Mann Act. Notches: (Re)marks on the History of Sexuality. Notches: (Re)marks on the History of Sexuality. Retrieved from https://notchesblog.com/2016/09/22/the-fbi-sexual-predators-and-the-mann-act/

Pliley, J. R. (2016, July). A Crop of Boys and Girls. Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-gilded-age-and-progressive-era/article/crop-of-boys-and-girls-gabriel-n-rosenberg-the-4h-harvest-sexuality-and-the-state-in-rural-america-philadelphia-university-of-pennsylvania-press-2015-304-pp-5500-cloth-isbn-9780812247534-5500-ebook-isbn-9780812291896/BD2C0D4425BC3D2B1615A3C2908F3651

Pliley, J., Kramm, R., & Fischer-Tiné, H. (2016). Introduction: A Plea for a “Vicious Turn” in Global History. In J. Pliley (Ed.), Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1870 - 1950: Fighting Drink, Drugs, and “Immorality.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://catalog.library.txstate.edu/record=b3528108~S1a

Pliley, J. (2016). The FBI’s White Slave Division: The Creation of a National Regulatory Regime to Police Prostitutes in the United States, 1910-1917. In J. Pliley, R. Kramm, & H. Fischer-Tin (Eds.), Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890-1950: Fighting Drink, Drugs, and “Immorality.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://catalog.library.txstate.edu/record=b3528108~S1a

Pliley, J. (2016). Vice Queens and White Slavery: The FBI’s Crackdown on Elite Brothel Madams in 1930’s New York City. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 25(1), 137–167.

Pliley, J. (2015). AMA: The FBI, White Slavery, and the Mann Act, 1910-1941. Reddit: Ask Historians. Conde Nast.

Pliley, J. (2015). Sexual Surveillance and Moral Quarantines: A History of Anti-Trafficking. Beyond Trafficking and Slavery. OpenDemocracy. Retrieved from https://opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/jessica-r-pliley/sexual-surveillance-and-moral-quarantines-history-of-antitrafficking

Pliley, J. (2015). Sex Trafficking and the Carceral State. End Slavery Now. National Freedom Center. Retrieved from http://endslaverynow.org/blog/sex-trafficking-and-carceral-state?page=1

Pliley, J. R. (2014). Why is it Congress Seems Concerned with Families Only When Sex Trafficking is at Issue? In History News Network. Retrieved from http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157661

Pliley, J. R. (2014). Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Retrieved from https://catalog.library.txstate.edu/record=b3509059~S1a

Pliley, J. R. (2013). The Petticoat Inspectors: Women Boarding Inspectors and the Gendered Exercise of Federal Authority. Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 12, 95–126. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/41721084?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Pliley, J. R. (2011, October). Review of Texas Through Women’s Eyes: The Twentieth-Century Experience. Southwestern Historical Quarterly.

Pliley, J. R. (2010). Claims to Protection: The Rise and Fall of Feminist Abolitionism in the League of Nations’ Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, 1919-1937. Journal of Women’s History, 22, 90–113. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/405411/summary

Pliley, J. R. (2008). Disablity in Superhero Comic Books. In S. Birch (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Disability History. New York: Facts on File.

Pliley, J. R. (2008). X-Men. In S. Birch (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Disability History.

Pliley, J. R. (2008). Voting for the Devil: Unequal Partnerships in the Ohio Woman Suffrage Campaign of 1914. Ohio History, 115, 4–27. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/239235

Pliley, J. R. (2007). In Memory of Helen Edmonds. Making History at Ohio State University.