Maxine Craig

Maxine Craig is a Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Davis, with cross-disciplinary affiliations in Cultural Studies, Performance Studies, and designated emphases in Feminist Theory & Research and African American Studies. Her research centers on the intersections of gender, race, and embodiment through qualitative analyses of everyday practices.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Sociology, University of California, Berkeley

Her research interests critically examine beauty politics, racialized gender, and embodied experiences, with particular focus on Black women's cultural practices. She investigates how beauty standards function as social control mechanisms while simultaneously serving as sites of resistance, analyzing historical shifts from 20th-century beauty salons to contemporary digital aesthetics. Her work bridges micro-level interactions with macro-level political structures, revealing how bodily practices reflect and reshape societal power dynamics.

Recent publications (2015-2024) consistently explore beauty as political terrain, with recurring themes of aesthetic citizenship, state power, and racialized embodiment. Articles like "Perfect smiles, aesthetic citizenship" (2024) and "Orthodontics as expected beauty work" (2021) demonstrate her innovative methodology connecting mundane beauty practices to systemic inequalities, while collaborative works like "The Routledge companion to beauty politics" (2021) establish foundational frameworks for the field.

Scientific Awards:

• 2014 Best Publication Award by American Sociological Association’s section on Body and Embodiment
• Best Book of 2002 by American Political Science Association’s Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

Dr. Craig has advised numerous graduate students in Sociology and interdisciplinary programs, with research often focusing on embodiment and cultural production. Her grant-funded projects have enabled longitudinal studies of beauty practices across diverse populations, contributing methodological innovations in studying categories "in motion" as demonstrated in her 2019 publication.

She actively participates in UC Davis' Gender Research Cluster and contributes to collaborative projects examining the global dimensions of beauty politics, including comparative analyses of presidential embodiment and transnational beauty standards.