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Dr. Vivian DzokotoVivian Dzokoto

Assistant professor, African American studies

Contact information

1000 W Franklin St., room 109
PO Box 842509
Richmond, VA 23284-2509
(804) 828-4925
(804) 828-1665 fax
vdzokoto@vcu.edu

Education

PhD (2005) in clinical psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Biographical statement

Dr. Dzokoto received her PhD in Clinical & Community Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and completed an APA accredited internship at the University of Michigan Counseling and Psychological Services. She is a licensed psychologist and health service provider in the state of North Carolina, and was an assistant professor in psychology at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina for 4 years.

Research interests

Dr Dzokoto’s interests lie primarily in applying quantitative and qualitative techniques to investigate the cultural grounding and somatization of emotion, focusing primarily on Black populations. Other areas of interest include cultural clinical psychology, anxiety disorders, multicultural competencies in psychotherapy, cross-cultural transitions, and intercultural communication.

Representative publications

Dzokoto, V., & Adams, G. (2007). Analyzing Ghanaian emotions through narrative: A textual analysis of Ama Ata Aidoo’s novel Changes. Journal of Black Psychology, 33, 94-112.

Dzokoto, V., & Okazaki, S. (2006). Happiness in the eye and heart: A comparison of somatic referencing in the emotion vocabularies of two West African emotion lexica. Journal of Black Psychology, 32(2), 117-140.

Dzokoto, V., & Adams, G. (2005). Understanding genital shrinking epidemics in West Africa: Koro, juju, or mass psychogenic illness? Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 29, 53-78.

Lo, H., & Dzokoto, V. (2005). Talking to the master: Intersections of religion, culture, and counseling in Taiwan and Ghana. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 27, 117 -128.

Diener, E., Scollon, C. K., Oishi, S., Dzokoto, V., & Suh, E. M. (2000). Positivity and the construction of life satisfaction judgments: Global happiness is not the sum of its parts. Journal of Happiness Studies, 1, 159-176.

More publications [PDF]

Recent courses

Introduction to African American studies

Recent grants or awards

2006 HBCU Substance Abuse Resource Center mini-grant, Principal Investigator.
Crisis Recognition, Instructor and Student Intervention Strategies (FSU CRISIS) Amount: $5,000.00.
2005 Fayetteville State University Center for Health Disparities mini-grant, Co-investigator. Exploring Mental Health Needs of Students at Fayetteville State University. Amount: $26,000.00.