Xavier James `25 is an explorer. He has spent his time at Grinnell driven by a passion for social inquiry and a curiosity for new experiences.
James hails from Western Tennessee, where he attended high school in a small town. He said he initially discovered Grinnell through the QuestBridge network, and listed his interest in continuing track and field in college.
He said that Grinnell is quite different from where he grew up, even though he was familiar with a rural context. “My first year here, I remember I would address all of my professors and everyone above me as sir or ma’am. It was very telling for them, they could definitely tell I was not from the Midwest,” said James.
Prior to coming to Grinnell, James ran track and dabbled in the performing arts by participating in drama. “I’ve always tried to cultivate an oriented athletics space, an oriented academics space and a third space that serves as a creative outlet,” he said.
To foster his third space in college, James has taken piano lessons with the same instructor since the second semester of his first year. “It’s my place to get away from all expectations that are set by other people. It just gives me a low stakes, fun thing to do outside of school and track,” James said.
Looking back on his first year, James said that relays stood out as a key core memory. “It was the first time in a while relays had been done. It was the middle of track season, and the first time we had a break in like two months. A large portion of students were there, and it was really fun to be in that space with my friends and everyone,” he said.
He also remembered his first Midwest Conference (MWC) championships for track and field fondly. “It was a really fun time. I was able to meddle in the 400-meter hurdles, so that was good. It was my first time competing on that big of a stage and doing well. It was incredible,” James said.
During his second year, James played a pivotal role in developing his academic curiosity and ultimately choosing to major in psychology. He credits Dr. Darrius D. Hills, associate professor of religious studies, and his class, REL-242: Religion, Race & American Evangelicism as the impetus for him to pursue further education.
“It was the first course I took where I critically analyzed a very pressing social issue,” he said. “It was the first time I had been in a context where I could put a name to a lot of things I experienced as a youth in the South. It is a place very steep in Evangelical culture, and being able to name all these toxic things that are occurring daily was super impactful.”
James said he had an inkling that he wanted to study developmental psychology after completing a project on different parenting styles for a psychology class he took in his senior year of high school. During his first semester of second year, he met with professor of psychology, Ann Ellis, who became his major advisor. “She’s very stern and strict and kind of mechanistic, and I’m none of those things, but I have a high tolerance for critique and tough love. It works out perfectly,” James said.
James spent the summer before his third year in Minneapolis, where he coached youth facing barriers to employment to advocate for themselves in a corporate setting. “It helped me develop my commitment to combating social inequalities on the ground. I think it also helped set me up to have a better time abroad because I was prepared to be away from home,” he said.
In the fall of his third year, James ventured away from his roots in Grinnell to study abroad in Denmark through the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS) Copenhagen program. “I met a lot of really cool people over there and explored a lot of different avenues in life,” James said. “I got really into photography and content creation while I was there. It definitely gave me a lot of perspective on life, and what my ideal life could look like.”
When he returned in the spring, James took PSY-314: Psychology of Collective Action with Nadia Vossoughi, assistant professor of psychology, where he developed his present focus of social psychology. “The religious studies course I took was just the beginning of general critical inquiry into some issues. This course was very granular in the sense of a specific discipline, psychology and specific aspects of social psychology that I found myself to be very interested in,” he said.
Throughout his fourth year, he has engaged in research in Vossoughi’s lab, studying what ideological variables, such as nationalism, impact peoples’ perceptions of free speech. James said that Vossoughi is 90 percent of the reason he chose to apply for graduate programs in psychology, and ended up committing to her doctorate alma mater.
After he graduates, James will be pursuing a doctorate in social psychology at the University of Michigan. “I’m hoping to look at intergroup relations, which essentially studies how ideological values, identities and beliefs impact how people relate to each other, behave towards each other and exist together,” he said. “I’m mostly interested in how ideological values determine people’s willingness to challenge the status quo and support marginalized groups. It’s a very social justice oriented view.”
