#  Jocelyn Viterna 

Professor of Sociology

 

 

 



   ![Viterna headshot 2023](/sites/g/files/omnuum1481/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/sociology/files/head_shot_jan_2023.jpeg?itok=Al1oS2tN) 

 



 

 location\_on William James Hall 

 smartphone [617-495-7569](tel:617-495-7569) 

 email <jviterna@wjh.harvard.edu> 

 laptop\_windows [Jocelyn Viterna's Website](http://scholar.harvard.edu/viterna) 

 laptop\_windows [Assistant: Sandra Llewellyn](/people/sandra-llewellyn) 

 laptop\_windows [Faculty Office Hours](https://hu.sharepoint.com/sites/FAS-Sociology/SitePages/Faculty-Office-Hours.aspx) 

 

 



 

*Research Interests*: Gender, politics, law, health, social mobilization, reproductive justice, abortion criminalization, violence, Central America

**Jocelyn Viterna** is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. Her research examines how social mobilization affects gender norms and practices in politics, in government institutions, in warfare, and in communities. Her current research investigates how anti-abortion activism in El Salvador has fundamentally transformed the Salvadoran judicial system, and more specifically, its processes for litigating gender. Viterna also examines how Salvadoran ob-gyns who care for pregnant women and fetuses in El Salvador negotiate the nation’s absolute abortion ban, and how these negotiations affect pregnancy health. Finally, Viterna is developing a book manuscript that situates the Salvadoran case in a broader regional and transnational context, asking what lessons we can learn from El Salvador about the the relationship between abortion laws and health, freedom, and democracy in the US and around the world.

Viterna’s work has been published in the *American Journal of Sociology*, the *American Sociological Review*, *Politics and Gender, and the Latin American Research Review*, among other journals. Her award-winning book, *Women in War: The Micro-processes of Mobilization in El Salvador* (2013, Oxford University Press) is currently being translated for publication in Spanish.



 

 

 





 

 

- ## Geographic Areas
    
     [Latin America and Caribbean](/geographic-areas/latin-america-and-carribean) [Global](/geographic-areas/global)
- ## Current People
    
     [Sociology Faculty](/sociology-faculty)
- ## Research Clusters
    
     [Comparative Sociology and Social Change](/research-clusters/comparative-sociology-and-social-change) [Crime and Punishment](/research-clusters/crime-punishment) [Gender and Family](/research-clusters/gender-and-family) [Political and Historical Sociology](/research-clusters/political-historical-sociology)