September 11, 2024
Salon Topic:
Kamala Harris and Me: Transferring the work of intersectionality across generations
Salon Guests:
Elizabeth Cole, PhD
Professor, Women's Studies, Psychology, and Afroamerican and African Studies
University of Michigan
Salon Description:
Brat. Gen X. Millennials. Conversations about generational status have been front and center this summer in the wake of Vice President Harris becoming the Democratic Presidential nominee. In this, our first back-from-the-summer-off salon, Dr. Elizabeth Cole, a vanguard in the application of intersectionality to psychology (her 2009 American Psychologist article, “Intersectionality and Research in Psychology,” is a must-read) is our guest. She’s also been a vocal critic of mainstream psychology’s epistemic resistance to intersectionality. For our September 2024 salon, Dr. Cole will explore the concept of generations of intersectionality. Drawing on generational parallels between her work (specifically, her “Opening Doors for the Insurgent” and “Waves and Riptides” chapters) and Kamala Harris's original presidential bid, Dr. Cole will reflect on the obligations of earlier generations of intersectionality scholars to support, encourage, and advance the more challenging intersectionality work of early career intersectionality scholars, and how to best meet those obligations. Please email us at info@intersectionalitytraining.com if you’re having trouble locating the chapters. This will be another good one, y’all. We can’t wait to see you.
Guest Bio:
Elizabeth Cole is a Professor in the Women’s Studies and Psychology Departments at the University of Michigan. She also has an unbudgeted appointment with the Department for Afroamerican and African Studies. Within Psychology, she is affiliated with the Personality and Social Contexts Area as well as Gender and Feminist Psychology.
Her research, at the intersection of psychology and women’s studies, works to understand the social construction of categories like gender, race and social class. Feminist theorists have long argued that these categories are not natural or essential, but instead derive meaning from specific social and cultural practices and beliefs that vary in different times and places. She is interested in questions such as: How do the categories mutually construct each other and work together to shape outcomes such as well being or political attitudes? How do people experience these social categories as parts of their identities? How do members of different groups perceive these categories of difference, and how are these perceptions related to prejudice? To address these questions, she uses both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her past projects have explored topics such as: political participation among women who graduated from college during the late 1960s, the role of social class identity in women’s attitudes towards abortion, and the processes through which race and gender consciousness develop among college students.
For the past 12 years, she has been writing about the concept of intersectionality: how do individuals simultaneously experience racial, class and/or gender identities?
- Grzanka, P. R., & Cole, E. R. (2023). The Routledge Companion to Intersectionalities. In J. C. Nash & S. Pinto (Eds.), Waves and riptides: Mapping intersectionality’s currents in feminist psychology (pp. 117-132). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003128656-12 - Cole, E. R. (2020). Opening the doors for the insurgent. In S. Fenstermaker & A. J. Stewart (Eds.), Gender, Considered: Feminist Reflections Across the U.S. Social Sciences (1st ed., pp. 9-28). Palgrave Macmillan. - Cole, E. R. (2009). Intersectionality and research in psychology. American Psychologist, 64, 170-180. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014564