Wilson Vincent, Assistant Professor, Psychology and Neuroscience
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We all have problems. Whether it is crunch time at work, a disagreement with your partner, or daily commute hassles—we get stressed. It helps when we can sometimes tolerate, change, or remove stressors. We might even have resources, like family, friends, or a lovely bank account, that help us get through the hard times. These resources, in turn, can support our ability to persevere and adapt. Now, imagine as, one by one, you lost these resources. How long before you had difficulty pulling yourself up by the oft-mentioned bootstraps?
Growing up, I saw intelligent and likable people succumb to their circumstances. Thus, I strive to understand why some people make it, but others do not. For example, how do stressors, such as living in poverty or other people’s negative attitudes about our social identities, like race or sexual orientation, affect our health? How do our minds and bodies process the issues we face? As we learn more about how social and structural issues, like stigma and poverty, affect us, what do we do about it?
To answer these questions, I use quantitative methods—i.e., statistical analysis techniques—and qualitative approaches—i.e., analysis of themes from interview narratives to get deeper than the numbers. I investigate, for instance, what might protect people living with HIV from depression or not seeing a doctor. I also develop combination mobile app- and community-based interventions to help people living with HIV stay healthy. My work and collaborations have been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Read more here.
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FEATURED PUBLICATION
Civil Unrest in Black Arts Movement Drama, Fiction, and Poetry
July 2022
~Casarae Abdul-Ghani (Assistant Professor, English)
My new book Start A Riot! Civil Unrest in Black Arts Movement Drama, Fiction, and Poetry (UP of Mississippi 2022) analyzes the understudied works of acclaimed writers who were also Black activists during the Civil Rights and Black Power eras. They are Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Gwendolyn Brooks, Ben Caldwell, and Henry Dumas also known as BAM writers. In my findings, I uncovered that these writers challenge misconceptions of protest, particularly representations of riots (or uprisings) that became more pronounced in the mid-to-late 1960s as pivotal leaders shaping their consciousness, such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., were assassinated. Ultimately, BAM writers through their articulation of riot iconography expose anti-Black racism, housing insecurity, educational inequality, and economic inequity. Therefore, I argue that BAM writers did not merely write literature that reflected a spirit of protest, in many cases, they understood their texts, themselves, as acts of protest.
Specifically in Start A Riot! I study the union of art, political activism, and African American culture to dismantle the notion that the legacy of riots enacted by Black people are disjointed or disorderly methods of reactionary discourse. Rather, I argue that the legacy of riots (through the lens of civil unrest) is conscious revolt used as a method for reparative justice. Such an analysis contributes to the knowledge of my discipline which is African American Literature and Studies because it illustrates how BAM writers' works weren't only centered on aesthetics, proclaiming that "Black is Beautiful," but also that "Black is Liberatory" which demonstrates how the Black Arts Movement has a literary and cultural legacy that still lives on today.
I am a creative and a lover of art. The Black Arts Movement, the period I study (1965-1975) used various mediums of art from drama, fiction, poetry, fine art, sculpting, and music to convey a sense of community for Black people that always intrigued me. So, I wanted to write about it, but in particular, its influence during the turbulent 1960s as a rally cry for what Martin Luther King Jr., term "the language of the unheard."
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AWARD OF THE MONTH
Alexandra Guisinger, Project Director, Associate Professor, Political Science
Nyron Crawford, Co-Project Director, Assistant Professor, Political Science
"Engaging a Diverse Public: American Public Opinion on Foreign Economic Policy"
-Carnegie Corporation of New York
In January, Professor Nyron Crawford and I will start a two-year project "Foreign Policy in a Diverse Society.” U.S. foreign policy exhibits more partisan consensus than most domestic issues. Yet, the impact of foreign policy - particularly economic policies such as trade, immigration, and investment - varies across different segments of American society.
For a few individuals, the impact of foreign policy in their daily lives may be obvious in terms of job opportunities and the prices of the goods they buy. For others, the impact may arise through the political rhetoric surrounding who deserve to benefit from U.S. government intervention or the types of people viewed as “belonging” in the community. As the U.S. grows more racially and ethnically diverse, the framing of foreign policy decision increasingly also speaks to how individuals view themselves and others within American society.
With the support of CLA’s Public Policy Lab and funding from the Carnegie Foundation of New York, we will launch a quarterly series of public opinion surveys to better capture American’s understanding of and engagement with foreign economic policy. By oversampling groups too often ignored in studies of public opinion, we will be able to provide greater depth of information about how race, ethnicity and gender shape individual’s experience with and attitudes towards foreign policy. By following individual preferences across a full 2 year election cycle during a time of transition in the international order, we will also be able to measure how changing international events, the news media, and political campaigns influence how Americans’ perceive foreign policy and its relationship to their own lives.
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