Courtney Frantz

Courtney Frantz is a Doctoral Student in Sociology, an Andrew W. Mellon Digital Publics Fellow, and a Graduate Center Fellow at the City University of New York. Through her scholarly work and organizing, Ms. Frantz aims to contribute to both sociological inquiry and on-the-ground activism. Her research examines how care worker organizers navigate the contradictions between their groups’ political priorities and the material imperatives of late capitalism. For her dissertation, she is using critical participatory methods to examine how disability justice care collectives—horizontal groups that use interdependence models rather than the labor market to care for disabled people—negotiate the tensions between their radical models and the pressures of neoliberalism. Ms. Frantz won the Erik Olin Wright Distinguished Article Award for her publication, coauthored with Professor Sujatha Fernandes, on her research about how the trend of strategic philanthropy among foundations has impacted worker center grantees’ approaches to their own campaign goals. During that research project, she and Professor Fernandes worked closely with domestic worker organizers to co-facilitate discussions about activism and funding among worker leaders, academics, and the public. Ms. Frantz is a Teaching Assistant at Hunter College.