The Division 35
Taskforce on Adolescent Girls
The Division 35 Taskforce on Adolescent Girls has developed this website to promote an agenda of research focused on empowering and improving the lives of girls. As such, this website will disseminate and archive research that is focused on adolescent girls or research that has an impact on the lives of adolescent girls. The work of distinguished scientists conducting research in this area will be featured quarterly.
The first featured scientist is Dr. Michelle Fine. Also featured are two of Michelle’s students: Maria Elena Torre and Sara McClelland.
Dr. Michelle Fine
Michelle Fine is a Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology, Women’s Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her recent awards include the 2008 Social Justice Action award from the Winter Cross Cultural Roundtable on Psychology and Education, 2007 Willystine Goodsell Award from the American Educational Research Association, the 2005 First Annual Morton Deutsch Award, an Honorary Doctoral Degree for Education and Social Justice from Bank Street College in 2002 and the Carolyn Sherif Award from the American Psychological Association in 2001. Recent publications include: Cammarota, J. and Fine, M. (Eds., 2008) Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion. New York: Routledge Publishers; and Sirin, S. and Fine, M. (2007) Designated Others: Muslim American Youth Negotiating Identities Post 9-11.New York: New York University Press.
Partial Bibliography
My work with adolescent girls and young women can be catalogued as participatory research on young women’s experiences of injustice and resistance in schools, prisons and youth social movements; research on young women’s bodies and sexualities, and feminist methodologies.
Young women’s experiences of Injustice and Resistance: in schools, prisons and youth social movements
Cammarota, J., & Fine, M. (Eds.). (2008). Revolutionizing education: Youth participatory action research in motion. New York: Routledge Publishers.
Zaal, M., Salah, T., & Fine, M. (2007). The Weight of the hyphen: Freedom, fusion and responsibility embodied by young Muslim-American women during a time of surveillance. Applied Developmental Sciences, 11, 3, 164–177.
Fine, M., & Weis, L. (1998) The unknown city: Lives of poor and working class young adults. Boston: Beacon Press.
Guinier, L., Fine, M., & Balin, J. (1996) Becoming gentlemen: Women, law school and institutional change. Boston: Beacon Press.
Fine, M., Burns, A., Torre, M. E., & Payne, Y. (2007). How class matters: The geography of educational desire and despair in schools and courts. In L. Weis (Ed.), The way class works: Matters: Readings on school, family and the economy. New York: Routledge.
Fine, M., Tuck, J. E., & Zeller-Berkman, S. (2007). Do you believe in Geneva? In N. Denzin, L. T. Smith, & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous knowledges.Beverley Hills: Sage Publications. Also in C. McCarthy, C., Durham, A., Engel, L., Filmer, A., Giardina, M., & Malagreca, M. (2007). Globalizing cultural studies (pp. 493–525). New York: Routledge.
Torre, M. Fine, M., Alexander, N., & Genao, E. (2007). Moving to the rhythm of social justice: Urban young women’s experiences of research and action. In B. Leadbeater & N. Way (Eds.), Urban girls, revisited (pp. 221–242). New York: New York University Press.
Fine, M., Torre, M., Burns, A., & Payne, Y. (2007). Youth research/participatory methods for reform. In D. Thiessen & A. Cook-Sather (Eds.), International handbook of student experience in elementary and secondary schools (pp. 805–828). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Pastor, J., McCormick, J., & Fine, M., with Andolsen, R., N. Friedman, N. Richardson, Roach, T., & M. Tavarez. (1996). Makin' homes: An urban girl thing. In B.J. Leadbeater & N. Way (Eds.), Urban girls: Resisting stereotypes, creating identities (pp.15–34). New York: New York University Press.
Young women’s bodies and sexualities
McClelland, S., & Fine, M. (2008). Writing on cellophane:
Studying teen women’s sexual desires, Inventing methodological release points In K. Gallagher, The methodological dilemma: Critical and creative approaches to qualitative research, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
McClelland, S., & Fine, M. (2007). Rescuing a theory of adolescent sexual excess: Young women and wanting. In Anita Harris (Ed.), Next wave cultures: Feminism, subcultures, activism (pp.83–104). New York: Taylor and Francis,.
McClelland, S., & Fine, M. (2008). Embedded science: The production of consensus in evaluation of abstinence-only curricula. Qualitative Inquiry, 8, 2.
Fine, M., & McClelland, S. (2007). The politics of teen women’s sexuality: Public policy and the adolescent female body. Emory Law Review, 56(4), 993–1038.
Fine, M., & McClelland, S. (2006). Sexuality education and the discourse of desire: Still missing after all these years. Harvard Educational Review, 76(3), 297–338.
Hall, R., & Fine, M. (2005). The stories we tell: The lives and friendship of two older Black lesbians. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 29(2), 177–187.
Fine, M., & Macpherson, P. (1993). Over dinner: Feminism and adolescent female bodies. In S. Biklen & D. Pollard (Eds.), Gender and education, NSSE Yearbook. Also in H. L. Radtke and H. J. Stam (Eds.). (1994). Power/gender: Social relations in theory and practice (pp. 219–246). London: Sage.
Fine, M., & Asch, A. (Eds.), (1988). Women with disabilities: Essays in psychology, culture, and politics. Sponsored by American Psychological Association, Divisions 9 and 35. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Feminist Methodologies
Fine, M. (1992). Disruptive voices: The transgressive possibilities of feminist research. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Clough, P., & Fine, M. (2007). Feminist activisms. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 35(3/4), 255–275.
Fine, M., & Torre, M.E. (2006). Intimate details: Participatory action research in a women’s prison. Action Research, 4(3), 253–269.
Related Links
Michelle Fine’s faculty website at the CUNY Graduate Center Psychology Dept.:
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/Psychology/socpersonality/MFine.htm
Website of the Participatory Action Research Collective at the CUNY Graduate Center, which Michelle facilitates:
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/start.htm
Maria Elena Torre
Description of research related to adolescent girls:
My research draws on participatory approaches that feature the production of spaces of radical inclusion—where differences among co-researchers are not only recognized, but engaged; and where power and privilege are made central. I am interested in how people traditionally viewed as subjects of research come together in such spaces, repositioned as architects of research, to collaboratively question the injustice that surrounds them, i.e: the striking educational inequalities, the absence of comprehensive sex education, or the loss of a once vibrant college-in-prison program.
Building on the work of Mary Louise Pratt (1992) and Gloria Anzaldúa (1999) and informed by critical race, post-colonial and feminist theory, I have begun to develop a “contact approach” within Participatory Action Research (PAR) that pays careful attention to the psychological dynamics of researching in the “contact zone” at the individual and collective levels, as well as the level of knowledge production.
My research with adolescent girls has largely taken place in schools and community-based programs. The young women in the Opportunity Gap Project and in the Echoes of Brown Project were part of a larger team of youth researchers and performers investigating educational inequities in 12 school districts in New York and New Jersey post-Brown, that also included some young men. My research with April Burns and the young women who worked as teen advocates in a reproductive health organization looks at the shifting discourse of desire in a heightened context of “accountability” and abstinence.
Related Publications:
Torre, M. E., & Fine, M., with Alexander, N., Billups, A., Genao, E., Marboe, M. & Salah, T. Participatory action research in the contact zone. (In press). In J. Cammarota & M. Fine (Eds.), Revolutionizing education: Youth participatory action research in motion. New York: Routledge.
Torre, M. E., & Fine, M. (2008). Researching together across difference: Methods for anti-racist teaching and learning. In M. Pollock (Ed.), Everyday antiracism: Concrete ways to successfully navigate the relevance of race in school. New York: The New Press.
Torre, M. E., Fine, M., Alexander, N., & Genao, E. (2007). Moving to the rhythm of social justice: Urban young women’s experiences of research and action. In B. Leadbeater & N. Way (Eds.), Urban girls, Revisited. New York: New York University Press.
Torre, M. E. (2005). The alchemy of integrated spaces: Youth participation in research collectives of difference. In L. Weis & M. Fine (Eds.), Beyond silenced voices (pp. 251–266). Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Available online at http://www.pbs.org/beyondbrown/resources/legacylinks.html.
Burns, A., & Torre, M. E. (2005). Revolutionary sexualities: Discourses of desire in the context of abstinence-only sex education. Journal of Feminism and Psychology,15(1), 21–26.
Burns, A., & Torre, M. E. (2004). Shifting desires: Discourses of accountability in abstinence-only education in the U.S. In A. Harris (Ed.), All about the girl (pp. 127–137). New York: Routledge.
Sara McClelland
Description of research related to adolescent girls:
In my collaboration with Michelle Fine, I have investigated how public policies affect the sexual and reproductive health of young women and men and, importantly, how outcomes of these policies fracture along race, class, gender, and disability lines. Recognizing federal policies as crucial to the social psychological contexts in which young women and men develop, we examined three major policies: abstinence-only-until-marriage education policies, parental consent for abortion, and age limits for emergency contraception. Using data from first-hand observations in federal and state courts, focus groups, interviews with educators, reviews of youth-based websites, legal discourses, and critical analyses of medical and psychological research, we developed number of theoretical frameworks that help to assess how young people’s sexual health is variably shaped by the policies they operate within.
For example, in our twenty-year update to Fine’s seminal 1988 “missing discourse” article in Harvard Educational Review, we critically analyzed the impact of abstinence-only curricula in low income public schools and introduced the theoretical framework of “thick desire” in order to encourage researchers, advocates, and policy makers to consider how sexual health relies not only on intimate supports, but on educational, familial, legal, and social supports as well (Fine & McClelland, 2006). Targeting reproductive rights advocates and legal audiences, we published a paper in Emory Law Review which analyzed how certain groups of marginalized young women, such as young women of color, those with disabilities, lesbians, and young women in poverty, suffer more severely as public policies aimed at encouraging adolescent sexual health shift away from offering support and, instead, toward punishment for sexual activity (Fine & McClelland, 2007). Additionally, we have recently analyzed the survey assessment tools which were used to measure the psychological and sexual outcomes of abstinence-only curricula (McClelland & Fine, 2008).
Related Publications:
McClelland, S. I., & Fine, M. (in press). Writing on cellophane: Studying teen women’s sexual desires; Inventing methodological release points. K. Gallagher (Ed.), The methodological dilemma: Creative, critical and collaborative approaches to qualitative research. London: Routledge.
McClelland, S. I. (in press). A good teaching tool: Some assembly required. Review of: Adolescent sexuality: A historical handbook and guide, C, Cocca, Ed. The Journal of Sex Research.
McClelland, S. I., & Fine, M. (2008). Embedded science: Critical analysis of abstinence-only evaluation research. Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 8(1), 50–81.
Fine, M., & McClelland, S. I. (2007). The politics of teen women’s sexuality: Public policy and the adolescent female body. Emory Law Journal, 56(4), 993–1038.
Opotow, S.. & McClelland, S. I. (2007). The intensification of hating: A theory. Social Justice Research, 20(1), 68–97.
Fine, M., & McClelland, S. I. (2006). Sexuality education and desire: Still missing after all these years. Harvard Educational Review, 76(3), 297–338.
McClelland, S. I., & Fine, M. (2007). Rescuing a theory of adolescent sexual excess: Young women and wanting. A. Harris (Ed.), Next wave cultures: Feminism, subcultures, activism. London: Routledge.
For more information about this site,
contact Kelly Kadlec, Division 35 webmaven.
