Personality Psychology and Popular Culture
Personal Narratives and the Self
Identity Strengths and the Development of Black Men
Identity and Educational Testing
Religious Identity and Expression
Cinema, Television, Emerging Media Studies
Born in Washington, DC, living elementary school years in Los Angeles, California and coming of age in Arlington, Texas, David Wall Rice calls on a diverse set of experiences in framing his work as an educator, writer and an advocate for social justice. David is currently a professor of psychology at Morehouse College where he leads the Identity Orchestration Research Lab, a strengths-based lab that works to understand and to elicit behavioral bests. This emphasis on positives is an approach that frames David's work beyond the academy. As a trained journalist and research scientist, David writes and speaks extensively on youth culture, music culture, media, politics, psychology and faith. He counts among his greatest achievements his consistent work with and for people from places of affirmation. "I appreciate and respect the access that starting from positive spaces can yield," says Rice. "This doesn't mean that we ignore the negatives, it means that we begin with a positive to get a positive. As a rule we have a problem seeing the pluses unless there are negatives that anchor them." Rice continues, "being with the people of Haiti, learning from their strength in the aftermath of the 2010 Earthquake; having a high school student that I worked with while in grad school explain that what we talked about during a difficult time was important to her - now as a physician - that is what it's all about. It's about pushing beyond the film of pathology to empower and to make free." David graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, earned a Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University and a Doctorate in Personality Psychology from Howard University. Presently David is Contributor to the national morning news program The Takeaway, is Editorial Advisor for The Gordon Commission and serves as Co-Director of Morehouse’s Cinema, Television and Emerging Media Studies (CTEMS) program. David has also provided commentary for major networks, newspapers, magazines, has written peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and is writing his second book for Rowman & Littlefield Publishers entitled, I Ain't No Joke: Identity orchestration through the narratives of hip-hop lyricism. David's current research looks at identity and the self within the recast social context of the "Obama Era," and the psychology of strength as informed by study in Israel, Haiti and Ghana.
direct line.404.681.7565 email.drice@morehouse.edu
Concentrations
Bio