Andrea L. Dottolo

“I Never Think about My Race”: Psychological Features of White Racial Identities

This study examines the ways that middle-aged white adults in a midwestern city talk about their own racial identity. Because race is a social identity that is so often viewed as “belonging” to people of color, this study assesses the ways that white participants responded to interview questions that asked specifically about racial identity. Twenty-three interviews were conducted with white graduates of the same high school in the Midwest when they were in their 50s. Qualitative analyses yielded codes that indicated denying any white racial identity or not understanding the question, experiencing white privilege, witnessing white privilege, and white guilt. Many expressions of white privilege were accompanied by ambivalence and anxiety.

Orchestrating Authorship Teaching Writing Across the Psychology Curriculum

This article describes the kinds of writing that could be introduced at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced course levels in the psychology major. We present exemplars of writing assignments across three institutions, including textual analysis, integrating intratext and intertext writing, and a capstone thesis project, where the skills learned in each assignment could inform those that follow in later years. Furthermore, this article addresses potential developmental progressions within each assignment as well. We present preliminary assessments of individual assignments and suggestions for evaluating developmental gains across the curriculum. To conclude, we discuss the value of teaching writing of increasing complexity across the psychology curriculum, and the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of such a program in the future.

Legacies of Migration: Italian American Women, Food and Identity

This quote is an excerpt from an interview that is part of a study on Italian American women, identity and food, which is the focus of this chapter. The interviewer is Carol, whom you will hear more about later, and she is in a room with the interviewee, Donna, and Donna’s friend Paula. (All names of interviewees are pseudonyms). I begin this chapter with the words of one of the women in order to set the stage, to introduce and contextualize this study. The central themes of this study are authenticity and Italian imaginary.

III. Historical significance of Shields’ 1975 essay: A brief commentary on four major contributions

This article argues that Shields’ work demonstrated that it is impossible to practice value-free science. And, despite the efforts of many feminist psychologists who have argued that the question of sex differences is someone else’s question, biological theories about the differences between women and men are still popular and influential today. This paper will call attention to four areas of scholarship produced by second-wave feminist psychologists who were inspired by Shields’ work: (1) rediscovery of the work of first-wave feminist psychologists, (2) discussion of the impossibility of value-free research on sex differences, (3) introduction of new categories of analysis such as “gender” and reframing research based on these new categories, and (4) addition of more value-laden categories to sex such as race, social class, and sexuality and using intersectionality theory to design new avenues of research.

Slicing White Bre(a)d: Racial Identities, Recipes, and Italian-American Women

This article focuses on Italian-American women and on how they construct, understand, and maintain their ethnic identity in relation to Whiteness and White privilege. Since language cannot serve as symbol for these women because speaking Italian was often forbidden in their homes, or spoken only between adults in covert communications, they often must cling to other symbols of Italianness in order to preserve their sense of gendered ethnic identities. I argue that one such symbol is food, wherein participants manipulate recipes and use food to navigate and negotiate being both Italian and American, Whiteness, femininity, and social class. Implications for therapy about how we understand our multiple identities in relation to others as part of larger systems of power and privilege are explored.

Whiteness and White Privilege

Psychologists, especially therapists, are often trained to ferret out, search and seize upon that which is not readily visible and cannot be spoken, implicit issues and influences, that are commonly taken for granted. Whether the models invoked are as diverse as those citing unconscious conflicts about love, sex and relationships or the hidden reinforcement of conditioning, psychological epistemologies are interested in making explicit that which is implicit and, in therapeutic approaches, bringing these issues into view. Feminist and multi-cultural researchers and practitioners further seek to expose the power structures that benefit them or that unfairly advantage some groups over others and so have, since their inception, striven to consider such issues as fees and sliding scales, masculinities and normative heterosexuality as unique areas of inquiry. This special issue is dedicated to adding to those issues that of Whiteness and White privilege in the therapy room, bringing to light that which is often unseen and, thus, unnamed. Whiteness has been investigated by sociologists and critical race theorists, but has been largely overlooked by psychologists and psychotherapists, even those who deal with feminist and multi-cultural issues. The designation “multi-cultural” has, thus far, been reserved for people of color and ethnic groups other than White. Thence comes its otherness, which we aim in this issue to extend to the “non-others.” While Whiteness generally carries privilege in European-American contexts, the extent of such privilege depends greatly on principles of intersectionality or mattering. That is, White women and men of different classes, disabilities and sexual orientations are not equally privileged in equivalent circumstances. Additionally, Whiteness is

Introduction: Special Issue on Lesbians and White Privilege

This article introduces the special issue on lesbians and white privilege. The beginning situates the imperative of examining white privilege in lesbian studies, and explains why critical analyses are long overdue. Overarching themes of the special issue are identified, followed by an overview of the trajectory of subsequent articles.

“I Remember You Most in the Kitchen”: Nostalgia—Love, Loss, and Longing

This chapter explores the ways that nostalgia emerged as a theme in the interviews, including the ways in which food represents a preservation of family members and a real and imagined history. We discuss the psychological and historical function of nostalgia, especially informed by Stephanie Coontz’s book, The Way We Never Were: American families and the nostalgia trap (1992). Participants discuss their childhood, family relationships and traditions, and their delight at being asked to talk about these topics, especially since “no one ever asks.” This is contrasted with their dismay at contemporary work/family relations and the loss of a cultural tradition.

Gendered Identities: Love and Labor

This chapter explores the ways in which these narratives reveal some of the gendered identities of our participants, namely wife and mother. The interview about recipes and food elicited ways of talking about being not only Italian American but also what it means to be feminine, and the accompanying compulsory roles of wife and mother. While these identities are discussed individually for simplicity, we employ intersectionality theory throughout in order to better understand these experiences and identities.

“But My Mother Ruled the Table”: Food and Power

This chapter explores participant responses to the interview question, inspired by Banks (2000), “is food associated with power in any way?” We examine gendered notions and strategies of power and manipulation as they relate to food.