RISE: Research on Inequality, Sexuality, and Education

Principal Investigator: Jessica Fields, PhD

RISE SPRING 2007 NEWSLETTER!

Student Interns

Community Collaborators

All of the projects in Dr. Fields’s research program challenge conventional understandings of the “effects” of sexuality education to include the lessons students take away about sexual difference and inequality; the intersections of sexuality, race, and gender inequalities; people’s claims to membership and belonging in social contexts; and their own and others’ entitlement to sexual pleasure and respect.

Ongoing

• Sexual Subjects: Race, Gender, and the Sex Ed Classroom
  An ethnographic study of community responses to North Carolina legislation requiring public schools to “teach abstinence until marriage.” Draws on participant observation and interview data from three middle school communities—teachers, students, administrators, and activists. This book is under contract with Rutgers University Press, Series in Childhood Studies.

  FUNDING: Social Science Research Council Sexuality Research Fellowship Program; Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues; San Francisco State University Human Sexuality Studies Program (with funds from the Ford Foundation); the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; SFSU Presidential Award for Professional Development of Probationary Faculty, and Woodrow Wilson Foundation

• Jailed Women and HIV Education: A Collaborative Investigation
  Participatory action research project examining (1) how risk and pleasure come together for women in an educational setting hosted by a punitive institution; and (2) health education’s capacity to challenge racialized, gendered, sexual, and economic social inequalities. Methodological focus on researchers, educators, and inmates working together to generate knowledge about women, sexuality, and incarceration. This study is in partnership with health educators from the Forensic AIDS Project (FAP).

  FUNDING: Universitywide AIDS Research Program; SFSU Center for Health Disparities Research and Training

• Relations: Race, Gender, and Sexuality, in Young Adults' Lives
  San Francisco site of an international comparative ethnographic study of race, gender, and sexuality in young adults' lives. Participant observation, interview, and survey data collection currently underway in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo), South Africa (Capetown and Johannesburg), and the United States (Chicago and San Francisco).

  FUNDING: Ford Foundation

Concluded

• Sexuality Education For and By Youth
  Study of whether and how sexuality education changes when young people are the teachers and learners. Particular focus on young people’s efforts to manage “educator” and “peer” roles; heteronormativity in sexuality education for and by youth; and institutional constraints in which youth educators work. Data come from focus groups led by student research assistants, who also play a central role in data analysis.

FUNDING: American Psychological Foundation Wayne T. Placek Small Grant

• Social Inequalities and the Movement for Same-Sex Marriage
  Considers contemporary movement for same-sex marriage and its elision of social inequalities based on race, age, and class.

FUNDING: San Francisco State University Human Sexuality Studies Program (with funds from the Ford Foundation)

• Needs and Resources of Peer Education Programs: An Assessment
  In Fall 2005, RISE began collaborating with Health Initiatives for Youth (HIFY), a San Francisco-based organization that promotes the health and well-being of young people, to assess the needs and resources of Bay Area youth education programs. Collaborative members, including student research assistants, collected and analyzed data from surveys, participant observations, and one-on-one interviews with youth educators and program coordinators. HIFY will use the findings to improve the trainings and other services they provide youth sexuality education programs in the Bay Area.