Yvonne Victoria Wells, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Psychology, Dean College Coordinator
B. A., Indiana University, Bloomington (Psychology and Economics); M.A., Ph.D., Clark University (Psychology); APA Minority Fellow

Contact Information

Suffolk University
Department of Psychology
41 Temple Street
Boston, MA 02114
Donahue 612
617-573-8515 (Office)
617-3672924 (Fax)
ywells@suffolk.edu

 

Courses Taught

PSYCH 241 Social Psychology
PSYCH 341 Sociocultural Perspectives on Behavior and Experience
PSYCH 733 Racial and Ethnic Bases of Behavior

Specialty Areas

Social and developmental psychology with a special emphasis on issues in ethnic identity development, health-related behavior, and body image. More recently, I have begun work in the area of religious-based conflict resolution.

I have several ongoing projects related to my interests. One project concerns the development of racial and ethnic identity in a society where race is more widely understood as a social construct and not as biological reality. I am considering, for instance, the idea that the African-American child may be healthier and more educationally successful when experiencing a firm historical grounding in one well-defined ethnic identity. This approach to minority child-rearing clashes interestingly with ideas of movement toward racelessness, equality, and "leveling the playing field" for American minorities. Also, the notion of the value of a strong ethnic identity has been the basis of several lectures and a theoretical paper which inquires into the role Black mothers have come to play in their daughters’ developmental processes.

I am currently working on a project concerning the possibilities that may exist for dialogue among individuals with well-defined religious identities. Here, the question of whether or not strong religious identity, which may relate to even physical well-being, can work in a world fraught with religious contention is the impetus for my research and theory development.

Selected Publications

Wells, Y. (2003). Super women raising super daughters: Whatever happened to black girlhood? In J. Demick and C. Andreoletti (Eds.), Handbook of adult development. New York: Plenum Press.

Bybee, J., & Wells, Y. (2003) Possible selves: Differences across age and gender. In J. Demick and C. Andreoletti (Eds.), Handbook of adult development. New York: Plenum Press.

Wells, Y. and Mambula C. (2003) The use of the Bible and the Koran in the teaching of conflict resolution: An examination of the religious narratives
of Ministers, Scholars and Pundits. Manuscript in preparation.

Wells, Y. (2003) Bringing Black children out of fictive culture and into the mainstream of development: A roadmap for healthy identity development in
a more "raceless" America. Manuscript in preparation.