Remix: Damage, Shame & Resistance

Fall 2007 Damage Seminar E-Journal

The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Download the E-journal as a 140-page pdf:
Remix: Damage, Shame & Resistance E-Journal

--or--
Download each of the papers in separate pdfs:

1.  Table of Contents & Cover Art

2.  Introduction: Michelle Fine & Bill Cross

3.  Urban Legends and the American Dream: Desiree Fields

4.  Spatial Stigma in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina:        Autumn Beckman

5.  Remix: Negotiating Shame and Resistance Among
     Black Lesbians: Ja’Nina Walker

6.  Queering Passing: Exploring Notions of Shame within      Passing: Rachel Verni

7.  The Prison Officer as Moral Buffer: Jessica Van Denend

8.  The Stigma of Blackness: LaToya Tavernier

9.  Spatial Stigma and the Discourses of Order and      Cleanliness: Éva Tessza Udvarhelyi

10. Critiquing Damage by Understanding Shame: Michelle       Billies

11. Did You Clock It? - Stigma Travels Through Research:      Liza Pappas

Faculty Emails:
Bill Cross: WCross@gc.cuny.edu
Michelle Fine: MFine@gc.cuny.edu

Class Description:

The social sciences in general, and psychology in particular, play a vital role in providing “scientific” support linking membership in stigmatized groups and a wide range of negative outcomes such as psychopathology, family structure, cultural implosion, low academic achievement, criminality, hypersensitivity to stigma status, learned helplessness, poor performance on high-risk tests, etc. This seminar will conduct critical conversations about the history of theory and methods in psychology dedicated to stigma and damage (black psychology, women's psychology, disability studies, queer/lesbian/gay psychology). Once a group has been stigmatized, individual members become the object of social policies and special treatment/services that the society would hesitate to apply to other citizens.  It is as if stigmatization provides a rationale for social license. This is the point by Rickie Solinger in Wake up little Suzie regarding society’s differentiate treatment of pregnant and out-of-wedlock black and white women before Roe v. Wade. Otherwise “pure” white women became ensnarled in “predicaments” and were whisked away to very private places. In exchange for immediately giving-up the newborn infant for adoption, the white women faced redemption, forgiveness, and a second chance at purity.  On the other hand, black women, whose pregnancy was linked to sexual licentiousness, were “left” on their own, with few social supports provided during pregnancy or after birthing. During WWII, black, Native American, and other men of color were often denied mental health benefits and disability services because such men were imagined not to have the complex mental capacity needed to respond positively to psychological treatment (i.e., psychotherapy). We want to interrogate the "damage/stigma" discourse and explore alternative theoretical and methodological positions. Although damage will be explored at the level of the individual (the black woman who is almost forced to carry her baby to term or man of color who did not receive care for his Post-Traumatic-Stress), we will introduce the concept of “group-damage” wherein evidence of damage to individuals may be called into question at the same time certain forms of internalized oppression diminish the capacity of the social group to which “undamaged” persons belong.