Assistant Professor
B.A., Psychology 1993, University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D., Clinical-Community Psychology, 2000, University of Illinois
Office: UW2-337
Phone: 425-352-5282
Email: jestewart@uwb.edu
Mailing: Box 358511, 18115 Campus Way NE, Bothell, WA 98011
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 UWB 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.
Recent Courses Taught
BIS 343 Community Psychology.
BIS 477 Abnormal Psychology
BIS 312 Approaches to Social Research
BIS 316 Topics in Psychology: Prevention and Promotion
Research/Scholarship
Broadly speaking, my research examines the mechanisms by which social context influences individual development and change. In particular, I am interested in how language practices-discourse, conversation, narrative-mediate and moderate the interrelationships between context, identity, and change at the personal, community and social levels. The problems I have examined-HIV prevention, recovery from and living with brain injury, problem drinking-are more than medical or public health concerns in that each involves confronting received narratives about personal and social identity. In each of these cases, health "outcomes" are tied in some way to how communities provide resources and contexts for re-negotiating identity, behavior and meaning. The disability community, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other mutual-help settings, and an organized gay community are examples of the kinds of community my research shows to be important to outcomes for brain injury, addiction, and HIV risk, respectively. I am currently establishing community partnerships for participatory action research on alternative settings for youth mental and sexual health.
Selected Publications
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.