Joan Ostrove's research concerns the connections between individual psychology and social structure. She is particularly interested in the ways in which our positions in the social structure (specifically with respect to gender and social class, and also with respect to disability), and at particular historical moments, shape our individual psychological experiences. She has pursued these interests in the domains of women's midlife personality development, socioeconomic status and health, social class and the college experience, and relationships between people with disabilities and non-disabled people. Currently, she is working on projects related to how social class background shapes people's experiences at college, on how processes of comparing ourselves to other people across the social hierarchy might be related to our physical health, and on how people build alliances across differences related to social identity, especially in the areas of disability and race. Ostrove has been teaching at Macalester since 1999. EDUCATION: B.A., Williams College, 1987; M.A., University of Michigan, 1991; Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1996
Journal Articles
Social class and belonging: Implications for graduate students’ career aspirations (with A. J. Stewart and N. Curtin), Journal of Higher Education (2011)
Review of 'Handbook of Diversity in Feminist Psychology' (eds. Hope Landrine and Nancy Felipe Russo) (with Alyssa Zucker), Sex Roles (2010)
Toward a Feminist Liberation Psychology of Alliances (with Elizabeth R. Cole and Gina A. Oliva), Feminism & Psychology (2009)
Reflections on the K-12 years in public schools: Relations with hearing teachers and peers from the perspective of deaf and hard-of-hearing adults, Disability Studies Quarterly (2009)
Contributions to Books
Building resilience in adolescence: The influences of individual, family, school, and community perspectives and practices (with Linda Risser Lytle, Gina Oliva, and Cindi Cassady), Resilience in deaf children : adaptation through emerging adulthood (2011)
Identifying allies: Explorations of Deaf-hearing relationships (with G. Oliva), Deaf and disability studies: Interdisciplinary perspectives (2010)
Continuing Commitment to Social Change: Portraits of Activism Throughout Adulthood, Women's Untold Stories: Breaking Silence, Talking Back, Voicing Complexity (1999)
Socioeconomic Status and Health: What We Know and What We Don't (with Nancy E. Adler), Socioeconomic Status and Health in Industrial Nations: Social, Psychological, and Biological Pathways (1999)
The Components of Linguistic Discourse: Lessons from Neuropsychology (with J. Kaplan, Hiram H. Brownell, and Howard Gardner), Psychosemiotik--Neurosemiotik / Psychosemiotics--neurosemiotics (1993)
Presentations
Measuring socioeconomic status and social class in psychological research, Continuing Education Workshop presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (2010)
“Look good” and “Be perfect:” How social class, religious, gender, and racial identities inform my work in Disability Studies, Annual Conference of the Society for Disability Studies (2010)
Other
Social class and belonging: Implications for college adjustment, Faculty Publications (2007)
This study addressed the extent to which social class position structures a sense of belonging...