Advisor: Deborah L. Tolman
Email: cbowman@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Link to professional website: christinbowman.wordpress.com
Year: 8
Research interests: My research investigates the ways the institution of heterosexuality affects how women and girls live their lives and make meaning of their experiences. Specifically, I study women’s sexuality including the following: women’s masturbation and connections to feelings of sexual empowerment; adolescent sexuality and relationships; masculinity and femininity ideologies; and the sexualization of women and girls in society. Under Deborah Tolman’s mentorship, I have also written about sexual embodiment, sex education, and engaging young women in feminist activism. I am also a research blogger for the SPARK movement, which aims to push back against the sexualization of girls and women in the media and “take sexy back.”
1st Doc: Tracing the concept of the looking-glass self
2nd Year Project: Female masturbation: Understanding experiences of sexual empowerment
2nd Doc: The biopsychology and social psychology of women’s sexual pleasure
Dissertation (in progress): Women’s solitary masturbation experiences: An intersectional approach to understanding the role of social power
Publications:
Bowman, C. P. (2014). Women’s masturbation: Experiences of sexual empowerment in a primarily sex-positive sample. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 38(3) 363-378. doi:10.1177/0361684313514855
*Winner of the 2013 AWP/SPW Annual Student Prize for Psychological Research on Women and Gender
*Nominated for and published as a Continuing Education credit article.
Tolman, D. L., Bowman, C. P., Fahs, B. (2014). Sexuality and embodiment. In D. L. Tolman & L. Diamond (Eds.), American Psychological Association Handbook of Sexuality. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Tolman, D. L., Brown, L. M., Bowman, C. P. (2013). “Hey media, back off and get off my body”: SPARK is taking sexy back. In K. Harper, Y. Katsulis, V. Lopez, G.S. Gillis (Eds.), Girls’ Sexualities and the Media.New York: Peter Lang.
Tolman, D. L., Davis, B., Bowman, C. P. (in press). That’s just how it is: A gendered analysis of masculinity and femininity ideologies in adolescent girls’ and boys’ heterosexual relationships. Journal of Adolescent Research.
Tolman, D. L., Bowman, C. P., & Chmielewski, J. F. (in press). Anchoring sexualization: Contextualizing and explicating the contribution of psychological research on the sexualization of girls in the US and beyond. In E. Renold, J. Ringrose, & D. Egan (Eds.), Children, Sexuality and ‘Sexualisation’: Beyond Spectacle and Sensationalism. Palgrave.
Ragonese, M., Bowman, C. P., & Tolman, D. L. (under review). Beyond the classroom: Sexualization, media, and youth-led sex ed. In L. Allen & M.L. Rasmussen (Eds.), Handbook of Sexuality Education. London: Palgrave.
Bowman, C. P. (invited entry, in progress). Masturbation. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
