Order Today
|
|
Carol Gilligan, Ph.D.
Carol Gilligan, Ph.D., is considered a pioneer whose work continues to reframe our understanding of what it means to be human. Her work in psychology expands our understanding of human development and the human condition. Her research has shown how the inclusion of women and girls' voices changes the paradigm of psychology, opening up new ways of thinking about education and mental health.
In 1982, Gilligan's groundbreaking and bestselling book, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, ushered in a new era of thinking about psychology and reshaped conversations about morality and ethics. Up to that point, women were considered less psychologically and morally developed than men to the extent that their sense of self and their moral judgments were based more on a psychology of relationships rather than a mathematical logic of rights and rules. Gilligan reframed the discussion of human development and provided a new theoretical model. Following the publication of In a Different Voice, Gilligan continued her exploration of psychological development in a variety of domains, including women's contributions to psychological theory and education and the relational worlds of girls. Her 1992 book (with Lyn Mikel Brown), Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her 1996 book, Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationship (with Jill McLean Taylor and Amy Sullivan), studied economically disadvantaged girls and their struggles to be heard and taken seriously. In her latest book, The Birth of Pleasure, Gilligan asks why we relive tragic stories of loss and betrayal. In this path-breaking work, she suggests that we are now at a critical point in human history, where advances in the human sciences have transformed our understanding of human nature and human possibility. Her research with man/woman couples in crisis; adolescent girls; and young boys and their parents, forms the basis for a new map of love.
With her students, Gilligan founded the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development and initiated the innovative prevention projects: Strengthening Healthy Resistance and Courage in Girls, and Women Teaching Girls/Girls Teaching Women. With Kristin Linklater, she directed The Company of Women, an all-women theater troupe that trained with companies of girls. Her prevention projects expanded to include boys (the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology, Boys' Development, and The Culture of Manhood) and highlighted boys' ability to read the human emotional world accurately and to be empathic and self-reflective. As boys adapt to the culture of manhood, these abilities may be at risk. Gilligan and her colleagues ask whether the extraordinary rise in the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and the increasingly serious violence among young boys may reflect a cultural crisis over the norms and values that have traditionally been associated with masculinity. Gilligan has also studied the ways in which these developmental patterns affect intimate relationships.
A summa cum laude graduate of Swarthmore College, Gilligan earned a master's degree in clinical psychology from Radcliffe College in 1960 and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard in 1964. She began teaching at Harvard with the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson in 1967 and received tenure as full professor in 1986. From 1992-93, she was the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge in England. In 1997, Gilligan was appointed to a newly endowed professorship at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, The Patricia Albjerg Graham Chair in Gender Studies, Harvard's first position in gender studies. Time magazine named her one of the 25 most influential Americans.
Gilligan is currently a University Professor at New York University with appointments in the Steinhart School of Education, the School of Law, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In this interdisciplinary position, Gilligan teaches a freshmen honors seminar and a seminar for law students on gender issues in democratic societies. Gilligan is the recipient of many awards including the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Education, which honors achievements in fields not recognized by the Nobel prizes, such as education and music, and the Heinz Award for her contributions to understanding the human condition.
In 2002, she debuted her critically-acclaimed first play, an adaptation of Hawthorne's classic, The Scarlet Letter. |
|
|
|
