Faculty Profiles

Colleges and Departments

Dr. Jessica R Pliley

  • Professor at History, College of Liberal Arts

Service Activities

Ongoing

  • Moderator, Caldwell Hays Examiner. November 1, 2025 - Present.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Journal of the History of Sexuality. 2018 - Present.

2027

  • Trustee, Berkshire’s Conference for the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities. 2024 - 2027.

2026

  • Officer, Executive Committee of the Coordinating Council for Women in History. 2021 - 2026.
  • Member, Curriculum Committee, College of Liberal Arts. 2020 - 2026.
  • Chair, Research Committee. August 2024 - December 2026.
  • President, Coordinating Council of Women in History. December 2022 - December 2026.
  • Member, Budget Committee. August 2025 - May 2026.
  • Member, Public History Minor Committee. August 2025 - May 2026.
  • Member, Undergraduate Committee. August 2025 - May 2026.
  • Member, Speakers' Committee. August 2022 - May 2026.
  • Chair, Environmental History Search Committee. August 2025 - April 2026.

2025

  • Reviewer / Referee, Journal of American Ethnic History. 2017 - 2025.
  • Reviewer / Referee, University of West Georgia. May 2025 - August 2025.
  • Reviewer / Referee, University of Texas at Arlington. May 2025 - August 2025.
  • Reviewer / Referee, University of California Press. August 2023 - June 25, 2025.
  • Chair, Executive Administrator Hiring Committee, The Berks. April 1, 2025 - May 10, 2025.
  • Member, Ad Hoc Committee on Hiring Strategy. April 2025 - May 2, 2025.
  • Member, Brinkley-Stephenson Award Committee, Organization of American Historians. May 1, 2024 - April 30, 2025.

2024

  • Member, Merit and Performance Advisory Committee. 2024.
  • Chair, MPAC Policy 2.2 Revisions Ad Hoc Committee. 2024.
  • Member, Graduate Studies Committee. 2023 - 2024.
  • Chair, Curriculum and Course Scheduling Committee. 2018 - 2024.
  • Member, Research Enhancement Committee. October 2024.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Texas A&M History Department. July 2024 - August 2024.
  • Member, Honor Code Council, Faculty Senate. August 2021 - August 2024.
  • Reviewer / Referee, University of Nebraska Press. May 2024 - July 2024.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Cornell University Press. April 2024 - June 1, 2024.
  • Co-Chair, Ad Hoc Teaching Evaluation Committee (Policy 1.1). August 2023 - May 2024.
  • Organizer, Alicia Gutierrez-Romine - Pushing Women from the Back Alley to the Border: Criminalizing Abortion in California, 1920-1969. March 21, 2024.
  • Speaker, First Tuesday Film Series--The Price Center. March 5, 2024.
  • Reviewer / Referee, University of Connecticut's Humanities Institute. January 2024 - February 26, 2024.
  • Organizer, Marla Ramirez-Gendered Banishment: Rewriting Mexican Repatriation Through a Transgenerational Oral History Methodology. February 22, 2024.
  • Organizer, French Vice in Texas: Migration, Trafficking, and Indecent Work in the Early Twentieth Century. February 15, 2024.
  • Co-Chair, Academic Program Review Committee. November 18, 2022 - January 2024.

2023

  • Chair, Bylaws Committee, Berkshire Conference for the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities. January 2023 - October 2023.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Routledge. September 2023.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker-Katie Hemphill, “'Sweeping in Its Ideas of Reforming Society': The Edmunds-Tucker Act and the Policing of Sex in U.S. Territories". August 2023 - September 28, 2023.
  • Chair, AHA-NEH SHARPE Grant Facilitator for TX State. June 2022 - July 2023.
  • Chair, Queer Studies Steering Committee. May 2022 - May 2023.
  • Interim Director, Women's and Gender Studies Program. August 2021 - May 2023.
  • Member, Curriculum Committee, Faculty Senate. August 2020 - May 2023.
  • Member, Summative Evaluation Committee for Dr. Mary Brennan. January 26, 2023 - May 1, 2023.
  • Participant, Bobcat Days! August 2022 - April 2023.
  • Chair, Graduate Student Essay Prize Committee, Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. July 2022 - April 2023.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker-Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, This is What a Feminist Looks Like: Fashion Politics in the Era of Women's Liberation. April 20, 2023.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker, Mytheli Sreenivas, Making Sense of Tangled Pasts: Feminism and Reproductive Politics in Modern India. April 12, 2023.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker-Elizabeth Escobedo, From Zoot Suits to Coveralls to Puerto Rican WACS: Researching Latinas’ WWII History. March 9, 2023.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker - Amira Rose Davis, Cinderella Girls: Black Women Athletes and the Politics of (in)Visible Histories. March 2, 2023.
  • Co-Organizer, Institutional Excellence. September 2022 - February 2023.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Radical History Review. December 2022 - January 2023.
  • Reviewer / Referee, ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships. December 2022 - January 2023.
  • Member, Joan Kelly Memorial Prize Committee for the American Historical Association. January 2020 - January 2023.

2022

  • Reviewer / Referee, Cultural & Social History. 2022.
  • Member, Search Committee for the Vice President for Institutional Inclusive Excellence and Chief Diversity Officer. 2021 - 2022.
  • Chair, Prelinger Award, Coordinating Council for Women in History. 2021 - 2022.
  • Member, Graduate Studies Committee. 2018 - 2022.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Oxford University Press. December 2022.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Journal of Global Slavery. August 2022 - October 2022.
  • Participant, Lockhart ISD Visit of Mexican American and African American Students. October 14, 2022.
  • Reviewer / Referee, NEH Awards for Faculty, National Endowment of the Humanities. April 2022 - July 2022.
  • Participant, TRIO Upward Bound Summer Program 2022. June 28, 2022.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Binghamton University's Citizenship, Rights, and Cultural Belonging Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence. February 2022 - May 2022.
  • Organizer, Women's and Gender History Colloquium. August 2021 - May 2022.
  • Chair, Black North America, 1750-185, Search Committee. April 2021 - May 2022.
  • Member, Research Committee. August 2020 - May 2022.
  • Member, Search Committee for a new Admin in CDGS. January 2022.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies. November 2020 - January 4, 2022.

2021

  • Co-Chair, Women's Studies Working Group. 2021.
  • Expert Witness, Senior Policy Operating Group, President's Interagency Task Force, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of State. 2021.
  • Consultant/Interviewee, Classic City Crime Podcast. 2021.
  • Reviewer / Referee, California History. 2020 - 2021.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Palgrave MacMillan. August 2019 - 2021.
  • Member, Suspension Appeals Committee. 2018 - 2021.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Routledge Press. 2017 - 2021.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Journal of Women's History. 2015 - 2021.
  • Organizer, MA Thesis Proposal Defense. November 2021 - December 2021.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker-Alison Efford, "Reading Women’s Romantic Friendships: Mathilde Franziska Anneke and Mary Booth, 1859–1865". September 23, 2021.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker-Rachel Brown, "Lone Star Abortion Rights: A History of the Texas Fight for Reproductive Justice". September 16, 2021.
  • Chair, Sallie Ward Beretta Committee, Scholar Taskforce, Council for Inclusive Excellence, President’s Office. January 2021 - June 2021.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Journal of the History of Sexuality. 2019 - June 2021.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker-Maylei Blackwell, "Chicana Power!: Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement". March 30, 2021.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker-Katherine Marino, "Feminism for the Americas". March 23, 2021.

2020

  • Reviewer / Referee, Cambridge Review of International Affairs. 2020.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 2020.
  • Coordinator / Organizer, Intimate Labors Writing Group. 2020.
  • Chair, Ellis W. Hawley Prize Committee, Organization of American Historians. 2019 - 2020.
  • Member, Prelinger Award Committee, Coordinating Council for Women in History. 2019 - 2020.
  • Member, Programming Committee, Berkshire Conference of Women's Historians. 2018 - 2020.
  • Book Review Editor, Journal of Women's History. 2017 - 2020.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 2012 - 2020.
  • Member, Ad Hoc Committee on Process for Evaluation and Reappointment of Tenure-Track Faculty. August 2020 - December 2020.
  • Member, History Department Representative, College of Liberal Arts CREC. September 2020 - November 2020.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Journal of Historical Geography. October 2020.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Gender & History. September 2020.

2019

  • Co-Chair, Chasing Slavery: The Persistence of Forced Labor in the Southwest conference. 2019.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Journal of Human Trafficking. 2019.
  • Coordinator / Organizer, Working Group on Modern-Day Slavery and Trafficking, Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. 2017 - 2019.
  • International Advisor, UK Arts & Humanties Research Council Grant. 2016 - 2019.
  • Co-Chair, Chasing Slavery: The Persistence of Forced Labor in the Southwest conference. May 2019 - October 2019.
  • Reviewer / Referee, University of Chicago Press. May 2019.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker-Pippa Holloway, "Living in Infamy". March 9, 2019.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. February 2019.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Yale Law Journal. February 2019.
  • Member, African American History Search Committee. August 2018 - February 2019.

2018

  • Reviewer / Referee, Journal of American History. 2018.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek - Vlaanderen, FWO [Research Foundation, Flanders]. 2018.
  • Reviewer / Referee, University of Wisconsin Press. 2018.
  • Reviewer / Referee, University of Washington Press. 2018.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Southern Cultures. 2018.
  • Member, Gender and State Programming Committee, Berkshire Conference of Women's Historians. 2016 - 2018.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker-Joel Quirk, "The Politics and History of Slavery: Competing Visions of Rescue and Repair". April 23, 2018.

2017

  • Member, Little Berks. 2017.
  • Member, Digital History Job Search Committee. August 2016 - May 2017.

2016

  • Member, Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000, Editorial Board. 2015 - 2016.
  • Coordinator / Organizer, Texas Branch of the National Woman Suffrage Association Biography Project. 2015 - 2016.
  • Chair, Website Committee. 2014 - 2016.
  • Member, Policy Committee. 2014 - 2016.
  • Undergraduate Advisor, Students Together Against Trafficking. 2014 - 2016.
  • Graduate Advisor, Phi Alpha Theta. 2013 - 2016.
  • Member, Graduate Studies Committee. 2013 - 2016.
  • Organizer, Guest Speaker-Grace Pena Delgado. November 1, 2016.

2015

  • Title IX Investigator, Office of Equity and Access. 2014 - 2015.
  • Coordinator / Organizer, Trafficking, Smuggling, and Illicit Migration in Historical Perspective, University of London, Birkbeck, London, UK, June 18-20, 2015. 2014 - 2015.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Contemporary European History. 2014 - 2015.
  • Reviewer / Referee, Media History. 2013 - 2015.
  • Member, Journal of Research on Women and Gender. 2012 - 2015.

2014

  • Coordinator / Organizer, American Studies in Transatlantic Perpsective: Critical Regionalism in Politics and Culture. 2013 - 2014.

2013

  • Organizer, The Double Lives of First Ladies: Power, Paradox, and Pageantry Symposium. 2012 - 2013.
  • Member, Phi Alpha Theta Committee. 2011 - 2013.

2012

  • Chair, Undergraduate Success Committee. 2011 - 2012.
  • Member, Women and Gender Research Collaborative Symposium Committee. 2011 - 2012.

2011

  • Member, Undergraduate Success Committee. 2010 - 2011.
  • Coordinator / Organizer, Women, Power, Politics, and the Pursuit of Social Justice: A Conference in Honor of Susan M. Hartmann. 2010 - 2011.

2010

  • Participant, Allies of Texas State Workshop, VPSA Allies of Texas State Program. 2010.