(John) Eric Stewart

Teaching

My teaching philosophy can be broadly described as "By any means necessary."  My goal is for students to be fabulous, to become even more fabulous, but also to be well-armed for the struggle. To that end, I will subvert, mock, mystify, transgress, coerce, seduce, or converse.  But I will not patronize. I will bank knowledge; I will break your piggy bank.  I will make students steal knowledge; I will make students make knowledge on and of their own. Because I think passivity and complacency doom people in life-and at any rate are a lame form of resistance-I do employ disruption and provocation as tactics. I lecture. I make students talk. I make them prove things. I make them read books and I make them watch movies. I make them write a lot and well. I do content and I do process. I do group and I do solo. I make students think about meaning and where it comes from. I make them think about other people and where they come from. I make them do things with and for others, in the classroom and in communities. I try to help them figure out who is and is not their friend. I force them to think about power-in part by not pretending like I don't have it and exercise it-because I want students to learn how to participate in and use power. Like a lot UW Bothell students, I came into higher ed through the "backdoor" of community college, 10 years after dropping out of high school, and worked my way through school. I therefore have a rather romantic belief in college as a great and wonderful thing (no kidding), and as a tremendous privilege. I also have little patience with complaints about high demands or difficult labors; this here, this is the easy part. I am hypersensitive to the ways that low expectations for student fabulousness are so much more oppressive than are high demands for student performance.

Courses Taught

BIS 270 Abnormal Psychology
BIS 438 Prevention and Promotion
BIS 493 Clinical Psychology
BISCP 343 Community Psychology
BCULST 502 Cultural Studies as Collaboration

Research/Scholarship

Generally speaking, I am after a better understanding of how people extricate themselves from cultural binds.  In particular, I am interested in how language practices such as discourse and narrative affect and are affected by the interrelationships between context, identity, and change at the personal, community, and social levels.  Most of my research has addressed people and communities negotiating medical, public health, or psychiatric diagnoses and classifications.  But HIV/AIDS, substance use, and disability are more than medical or public health concerns in that they involve confronting received narratives about personal and social identity.  In each of these cases, health "outcomes" are tied in complex ways to how communities provide contexts and facilitate practices for re-negotiating identity, relationships, and meaning.

Selected Publications

Stewart, E. (2010). On voice: Difference, power, change. In M. Aber, K. Maton, & E. Seidman (Eds.), Empowering settings and voices for social change.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Stewart, E. & Rappaport, J.  (2005).  Narrative insurrections: HIV, circulating knowledges, and local resistances.  In E. Trickett & W. Pequegnat (Eds.), Community interventions and AIDS (pp. 56-87).  New York: Oxford University Press.

McKellar, J., Stewart, E., & Humphreys, K.  (2003).  Alcoholics Anonymous involvement and positive alcohol-related outcomes: Cause, consequence, or just a correlate?  A prospective 2 year study of 2319 alcohol dependent males.  Journal of Clinical and Consulting Psychology. 71(2), 302-308.

Stewart, E.  (2000).  Thinking through others: Qualitative research and community psychology.  In E. Seidman and J. Rappaport (Eds.), Handbook of Community Psychology (pp. 725-736). New York: Plenum.

Stewart, E. & Weinstein, R. S.  (1997).  Volunteer participation in context: Motivations and political efficacy within three AIDS organizations.  American Journal of Community Psychology, 25(6), 809-838.