ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors adopt the longstanding and contested metaphor of waves and their study to trace early instantiations of intersectionality theory through contemporary understandings of the concept throughout psychology, albeit with a focus on feminist psychology. In psychology, the uptake narrative has been calcified by high-profile publications and critiques that have identified psychological research as especially ripe for the reduction of intersectionality into a methodological quagmire rather than a substantive epistemic critique, political project, and far-reaching paradigm for transformational psychological inquiry and activism. Narrative reviews, content analyses, and systematic analysis of the state of intersectionality studies in psychology today produce a fairly sobering account of intersectionality's place in the discipline of psychology. The most recent wave of intersectionality discourse in psychology was marked by the 2008 special issue of Sex Roles on intersectionality and signified a preocupation with methods.
