I have been engaged in a "life-long struggle with the notion of white superiority" as one reviewer wrote about my work(Van Ausdale, Social Forces, September, 1998). In many ways, I think this captures the central theme in my research.
My theoretical perspective is informed by the work of three key sociologists of the contemporary era: C. Wright Mills’ politically engaged critical sociology, Joe Feagin’s theories of systemic racial oppression, and Patricia Hill Collins’ conceptualization of Black feminist thought.
My research is primarily about understanding the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality. I have explored "intersectionality" in a number of publications covering a diverse range of substantive areas. Earlier, I examined these connections in my book, White Lies: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse, (1997, Routledge) which has been widely adopted for use in college classrooms both for its theoretical and methodological contributions. I have updated this investigation in recently in a book called Cyber Racism (2009, Rowman & Littlefield) which examines how these groups have translated their discourse into digital media. I have published about intersectionality and health in two chapters in the edited volume Gender, Race, Class & Health (Edited by Schultz & Mullings, Jossey-Bass, 2006). And, I served as Guest Editor for a special issue of the journal Gender & Society, where I coordinated a symposium in which six leading scholars will respond to a paper about intersectionality by Margaret Andersen. I wrote an introduction to the symposium for the February 2008 issue of the journal. A number of other research projects focus more heavily on race, although they still include attention to class, gender and sexuality.
Race, Digital Media & the Production of Knowledge
Increasingly, people are using new participatory digital media technologies, like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. These technologies makes it is easier than at any other time for almost anyone to make their own media and distribute to everyone they know, and possibly, to a wider audience. My research into cloaked sites that appear to be legitimate civil rights sites but in fact disguise a hidden white supremacist political agenda has important implications for understanding race, digital media and the production of knowledge. This research also has implications for understanding how scientific knowledge about health is created and disseminated in the digital era. For example, the website www.teenbreaks.com, appears to be a legitimate reproductive health site but is in fact a cloaked pro-life site that includes rheotric about a supposed "post-abortion syndrome." This is not a medically-recognized condition, but rather a rhetorical strategy used by the pro-life movement to challenge the legitimacy of abortion rights. My research with adolescents navigating the Internet reveals that they are often mislead by these often hard-to-detect cloaked sites. Critical thinking and a situated epistemology are crucial for meeting the challenge of discerning propaganda from scientific knowledge in the information age, and crucial for public health education in the 21st century. An article based on part of this research, called “Cloaked Sites: Propaganda, Cyber Racism and the Digital Era,” has been accepted for publication in the journal New Media & Society (forthcoming).
Digital Survey of Urban Streets in New York City
How do features of urban streets, such as accessbility and corporate disease promotion, affect health in neighborhoods?
How does urban racial segregation play a role in this? And, how can young people of color learn to use digital media to measure these effects and take action in their communities? These are some of the questions under investigation in a pilot study I'm involved with now, and you can read more about this here. This pilot study includes the use of Flip cameras and handheld computers. The researchers involved in the project are both graduate students in and recent graduates of Urban Public Health at Hunter College.
Race, Masculinity, Health & Jails in New York City
From 2002-2005, I directed a research project administered through Hunter College, Urban Public Health involving young men incarcerated at Rikers Island, New York City's largest jail. The study focuses on the ways racial pride and masculinity affect health during the period of re-entry to the community from jail. Known by the acronym, REAL MEN, this innovative intervention research offers young urban men of color a pathway to racial and ethnic pride and a healthier definition of masculinity upon return to their communities after serving sentences in New York City jails. Pictured here are some of the extraordinarily gifted colleagues I have had the privilege of working with on the project (left to right): Charles Watts, Adele Panico, Yasser Payne, and Ron Shuler. The first paper from this project is forthcoming in the journal Health Promotion & Practice. And, there are several other academic papers based on this project under review at a number of journals, including Race, Gender & Class.
New Projects
I am in the beginning stages of several new projects: 1) first, is an interview study with bloggers exploring how issues of health, body image, race and sexuality and reproduction shape their online presence and interest in digital media; 2) a second and related project, is study of YouTube as a site of contested meanings about gender and race; and 3) third, is an investigation into the ways that urban homeless LGBTQ youth use small digital video cameras to document the ways they navigate the streets and shelters of New York and the ways they resist these damaging influences.
I am also planning an evaluation of the use of digital and documentary films in the classroom in a controlled, experimental design using the principles of "SoTL," the scholarship of teaching and learning.