Diversity as Discipline

DIVERSITY WORKING GROUP BIOS

Luis Alvarez is Associate Professor of History at UC San Diego. His research and teaching interests include relational race and ethnicity, popular culture, and social movements in the history of Chicanas/os, Latinas/os, African Americans, and the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. He is the author of The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II (2008, University of California Press, American Crossroads Series) and co-editor of Another University is Possible (University Readers Press, 2010). His publications also include essays in Latino Studies, Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Popular Music and Society, Perspectives, French Review of American Studies, OAH Magazine of History, and Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies.

Felice Blake is Associate Professor of English at UC Santa Barbara. She received her PhD in literature at UC Santa Cruz, her MA from the University of Oslo, Norway in British and American studies, and her BA from UC Los Angeles in English and Spanish. Her book, titled Black Love, Black Hate (2018), examines intraracial deceptions, cruelties, and contempt in Black literature.

Gabriela Cázares is a Postdoctoral Scholar at UCHRI. Gabriela has spent her career as an administrator and humanities scholar focused on bridging broader campus communities. Her extensive extensive experience stems from working with underrepresented populations both within and outside of the university. She manages multiple programs under the Horizons of the Humanities initiative. This includes overseeing diversity projects and building collaborative partnerships across multiple divisions throughout the UC system and surrounding communities.

David Theo Goldberg is the Director at UCHRI and the
executive director of the Digital Media & Learning Research Hub. He holds faculty appointments as professor of comparative literature, anthropology, and criminology, law and society at UC Irvine.

Jenny Kwon is the Associate Chief of Staff with the Office of the Chancellor at UC Berkeley. Reporting to the Associate Chancellor, Jenny provides advisory, analytical, communication, and project management support for a wide range of projects, initiatives, committees, and working groups. She takes the lead in assigned areas for policy and program planning, development and administration, and research analysis in support of a broad array of initiatives directed by the Chancellor and Associate Chancellor.

Stephanie Jones is a PhD Student with the Department of Sociology at UC Irvine. She received her BA from UC Merced. She is heavily involved in the Diverse Educational Community and Doctoral Experience (DECADE) program at UC Irvine.

Mariam Lam is Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at UC Riverside. She specializes in Southeast Asian literatures and cultures, Vietnam, postcolonial criticism, diaspora and globalization, gender and sexuality, ethnic studies, literary and cultural translation, tourism, community politics, media development, educational curriculum and pedagogy, trauma, repression, psychoanalysis, minoritized aesthetic production and multiculturalism, la Francophonie, and academic disciplinarity.

Alberto Ledesma is a Graduate Diversity Officer at UC Berkeley. Alberto grew up in East Oakland and received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from UC Berkeley. He earned a PhD in ethnic studies in 1996 and is a former faculty member at California State University, Monterey Bay, and a lecturer in ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. As the graduate diversity director for the Arts & Humanities, Alberto helps undergraduate students develop a successful plan for gaining admission into the top-ranked graduate Arts & Humanities programs in the nation.

Lorena Márquez is Assistant Professor with the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Davis. Born to Mexican migrant farmworkers and raised in nearby Galt, Dr. Márquez has never forgotten her roots. She grew up in poverty with hard working parents who made countless sacrifices. As a native Spanish- speaking daughter of immigrants and first-generation college student, she knows firsthand of the challenges many Chicanx and Latinx students face inside and outside of the classroom. She is keenly aware of educational inequities and is committed to making college truly accessible to all—regardless of citizenship or socio- economic background.

Nick Mitchell is Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. He received his PhD in the History of Consciousness with an emphasis in Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz where he is also an Associate Professor in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. He is the founding coordinator of the Black Cultural Studies Research Cluster and the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Graduate Collective. His research and teaching explore the social arrangements of knowledge and the ways that knowledge and its institutional practices arrange social worlds. Currently, he is at work on a book tentatively titled Disciplinary Matters: Black Studies, Women’s Studies, and the Neoliberal University, placing the institutional projects of black studies and women’s studies not at the margins, but the heart of the consolidation of the post-Civil Rights U.S. university.

Kendy Rivera is a PhD Candidate with the Department of Chicana/o Studies at UC Los Angeles. Kendy received her M.A. in Latin American Studies from UC Los Angeles and her B.A. in Political Science and Latin American Studies from San Diego State University. She is a Mexican/American transnational queer woman- of-color who has been leading research in the politics, history, and culture of Afro-Mexican communities. She has become increasingly interested in the concept of intersectionality applied within the interdisciplinary field of Chicana/o studies – specifically how race, gender, class, and sexuality intersect and impact subjectivity.

Mario Sifuentez is Associate Professor of History at UC Merced. The son of immigrant farm workers from Mexico, Mario Sifuentez grew up in rural Oregon. At an early age, he became acutely aware of injustice and it had a profound effect on him. Dr. Sifuentez began his professional career at UC Merced. On campus, he sits on the Undergraduate Council, Athletic Advisory Committee, and is a member of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies working group. His current project focuses on farm workers, water rights, and food equity in the Central Valley.

Sabrina Smith is an Assistant Professor of History and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at UC Merced. She obtained her BA in Anthropology and Spanish from UC Santa Barbara, and her MA and PhD in History at UC Los Angeles. She studies colonial Latin American history, and specifically, the African-descended populations in Mexico. Her work broadly addresses the African Diaspora, slavery, and the construction of race and ethnicity in the Americas. Sabrina is also involved in several projects with UCHRI. She collaborated on the Humanists@Work PhD tracking initiative and is a current member of the UCHRI Diversity Working Group.

Damien Sojoyner is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine. He is an urban anthropologist with a diasporic framework. His courses include Urban Ethnography in the United States and Prisons and Public Education as well as Black Ethnography in the Anthropological Imagination, Prisons in the United States, and Black Political Theory. His first book, titled First Strike: Educational Enclosures of Black Los Angeles, was published by University of Minnesota Press (2016).

PARTICIPANT BIOS

Deidre Acker is the Director of Campus Climate at UC Merced. She has been a UC employee for more than 30 years, working at UC Santa Barbara for more than 17 years before moving to UC Merced in 2007. De has served as the Director of Campus Climate at UC Merced for the past three years. She was previously the Campus Ombuds and prior to that served as the Assistant Dean for the School of Natural Sciences. At UC Santa Barbara, she was the Director of the Women’s Center for 12 years. Acker was one of the founding members of the campus’ mediation program, served as co-president of the Professional Women’s Association, co- chair of the Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Women, and managed the creation of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender student resource center. De also served as the Staff Advisor to the University of California Regents from 2014-2016.

Neama Alamri is a PhD candidate with the Interdisciplinary Humanities program at UC Merced. Her dissertation explores histories of labor and activism in the Yemeni diaspora throughout the twentieth century.

Ricardo A. Alcaino is the Director & Affirmative Action Officer for the Equal Opportunity & Discrimination Prevention Office at UC Santa Barbara. He oversees campus non-discrimination programs and policies, including the Campus Affirmative Action Plan, protected discrimination education & investigation programs, and assists with campus cultural climate diversity programs. Ricardo previously served as Director of Diversity, Equity, and Employment Practices at California State University, Monterey Bay. Prior to that, Ricardo directed the City of Santa Cruz Equal Opportunity Compliance, Outreach, Diversity, and Education Compliance programs. He came to that position from the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, where he began his career as a non-discrimination Investigator & Compliance Educator.

Raquel Aldana is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Diversity at UC Davis. Raquel Aldana joined UC Davis in July 2017 to serve as the inaugural Associate Vice Chancellor (AVC) for Academic Diversity. In this role, she has led important initiatives such as the institutionalization of ADVANCE, serving as Co-Chair of the Hispanic Serving Institution Taskforce, and collaborating with other administrative units and deans to promote the integration and work of faculty who bring multicultural perspectives and contributions to their research, teaching and service. AVC Aldana came to UC Davis after 17 years as a Law professor during which she instituted service learning initiatives to provide legal services to immigrants, created study abroad programs to instill the values and attitudes of intercultural sensitivity into cross-cultural lawyering, and produced engaged scholarship focused on transitional justice, rule of law reforms in post-conflict societies and Immigrant rights. AVC Aldana is an immigrant from Central America (Guatemala and El Salvador) and a first generation college student.

Aaron Alvarado is a PhD Candidate with the Deparmtent of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside. He grew up in California’s San Joaquin Valley and earned a Bachelor’s degree in American Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies at UC Davis. Aaron’s research is broadly engaged with the fields of critical race and ethnic studies, critical university studies, political ecology, and queer rurality studies. His dissertation, tentatively titled “Reckoning the Rural: The San Joaquin Valley, California, and the Politics of Knowledge,” examines the broader sociopolitical climate and spatial developments in the San Joaquin Valley and links them to the history of racial capitalism and the production of knowledge at public research universities.

Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval is a Professor with the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of Starving for Justice: Hunger Strikes, Spectacular Speech, and the Struggle for Dignity as well as the Globalization and Cross-Border Labor Solidarity in the Americas: The Anti-Sweatshop Movement and the Struggle for Social Justice. He has been actively involved in struggles for human rights, labor rights, and social justice on the national, state, and local level.

Darren Arquero is a PhD Candidate with the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Sponsored by Butler Koshland Fellowships, Darren joined the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) in 2018. Currently on a leave of absence from the Ethnic Studies program at UC Berkeley, Darren uses the power of storytelling to advance multidisciplinary research for strategic communications and impactful change, particularly within queer communities of color. Prior to NCLR, Darren served as a Research Fellow to Director john a. powell at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. Before the Haas Institute, Darren interned as a Network and Research Associate at Race Forward, writing as the primary author for the report “Better Together in the South: Building Movements across Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation.”

Nataly Bautista is a PhD Student wiht the Department of Anthropology at UC Irvine. Her research interests include transnationalism, migration, indigenous identity and belonging, hometown associations, Oaxaca, and “Oaxacalifornia.”

Gwynn Benner is the Assistant Vice Provost for Student Success at UC Santa Cruz. Gwynn Benner has worked for ten years within the UC system. She currently serves as Assistant Vice Provost for the Division of Student Success at UC Santa Cruz. She oversees the administration of annual funding for student success initiatives, is co-lead for UC Santa Cruz’s First Generation Initiative, and facilitator for the UC systemwide First Generation Coalition. Benner helped lead efforts to develop a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion online orientation completed by 5400 incoming frosh and transfer students in 2018. She served as a Northern California UC-CORO Leadership Collaborative member in 2018, supporting development of a study, “Leading with Diversity: Strategies for Recruitment and Retention” focused on the senior management group.

Kim Clark is a PhD Student with the Department of Communication at UC San Diego. Clark’s research integrates scholarly communication with engaged social and media practice. Her primary focus surrounds intersections between cultural and knowledge production and exchange, and efforts to fight mass incarceration, police brutality, and the detention and deportation of im\migrants. Her work is informed by and in support of the broadening scope and reach of intercultural and international grassroots community-building and self-advocacy efforts involving digital and static media.

Alicia Cox is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Comparative Literature at UC Irvine. She is also the director of UCI’s Native American Studies program, and is working to reinvigorate the Minor program by redesigning the curriculum to reflect faculty strengths in hemispheric and global Indigenous studies. From 2014-2016, Alicia was a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Davis. Alicia earned a PhD in English with a concentration in Native American Studies at UC Riverside and a BA in English at the University of Kansas. Alicia has published work in Studies in American Indian Literatures, The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature, and Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory.

Ofelia Cuevas is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Davis. Dr. Cuevas is an interdisciplinary scholar in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego in 2008. Her research is at the intersections of Critical Race Studies, Visual and Cultural Studies and Geography and Law. Her work focuses on race, prisons and policing. Her research interrogates the critical questions; what lives constitute an ethical crisis? And what is the contemporary value embedded in the practice of racial violence?

Yesenia Curiel is the Director of Campus Advocacy, Resources & Education (CARE) Office at UC Merced. Yesenia Curiel identifies as a being bilingual and bicultural, a Chicana/Latina/Woman of Color, bisexual and preferred pronouns are she/her/hers. She has over 17 years’ involvement in the anti-gender-based violence field. She is passionate about developing culturally and linguistically appropriate programming. Yesenia is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She co-founded the first affinity professional group at UC Merced, the Staff and Faculty of Color Association and the Language Accessibility Committee to ensure that staff members are culturally and linguistically prepared to interact with monolingual Spanish speaking parents.

Amrit Deol is a PhD Candidate with the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program at UC Merced. She received her BAs in Women’s Studies and English from the California State University, Fresno. In her dissertation project, “The Makings of a Mutiny: Ghadri Poetry and Interrogations of Subjugated Knowledges in History,” she is creating an intellectual history of secular and non-secular traditions within the Ghadar Party. More broadly, she is interested the histories of anti-colonial movements in Punjab and its diaspora in the early 20th century. From 2017-2018, she was the Graduate Fellow with the UC Merced Center for the Humanities. She is currently the Meylan Study Award Fellow at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, 2018-2019.

Oscar Dubón was appointed as the Vice Chancellor of Equity & Inclusion at UC Berkeley on July 1, 2017. In his role, he leads campus- wide efforts through the Division of Equity & Inclusion to broaden the participation of all members of the campus community, particularly those who have been historically underrepresented and/or unwelcomed, in the pursuit of the university’s mission of access and excellence. Dubón is also a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He received a BS from UC Los Angeles in 1989 and an MS and PhD from UC Berkeley in 1992 and 1996. His research focuses on understanding the role of crystalline imperfections on the electronic behavior of materials for applications in semiconductor technologies.

Fatima El-Tayeb is a Professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego. Her work deconstructs structural racism in “colorblind” Europe and centers strategies of resistance among racialized communities, especially those that politicize culture through an intersectional, queer practice. She is the author of three books and numerous articles on the interactions of race, gender, sexuality, religion and nation. She is active in black feminist, migrant, and queer of color organizations in Europe and the US. She co-founded the Black European Studies Project (BEST) in 2004 and is co-author of the feature film Alles wird gut/Everything will be fine (1997).

Aisha Finch is an Associate Professor with the Department of African American Studies at UC Los Angeles. Her areas of research and teaching include comparative slavery; political and intellectual movements in Cuba, Latin America, and the African Diaspora; gender ideologies in the Caribbean, and black feminist thought. Her current book manuscript, Rethinking Slave Rebellion in Cuba: La Escalera and the Insurgencies of 1841-1844, explores the resistance movements and political cultures of enslaved rural Cubans during the mid-nineteenth century.

Mishuana Goeman is an Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Chair of American Indian Studies Interdepartmental Program, Associate Director of American Indian Studies Research Center, and Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs at UC Los Angeles. Dr. Goeman is the author of Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and the forthcoming Settler Aesthetics and the Spectacle of Originary Moments: Terrance Malick’s the New World (University of Nebraska Press). She is a Co-PI on two community-based digital projects, Mapping Indigenous L.A. (2015), which gathers alternative maps of resiliency from Indigenous LA communities, and Carrying Our Ancestors Home (2019), a site concentrating on better working tribal relationships and communications as it concerns repatriation and NAGPRA.

Dayo Gore is Associate Professor with the Department of Ethnic Studies as well as the Department of Critical Gender Studies at UC San Diego. She is currently Chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies and founding Director of the Black Studies Project at UC San Diego. Dr. Gore earned a PhD in History from NYU and has previously taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her research interests include U.S. political and cultural activism and black women’s intellectual thought and activism in the long 20th Century. Dr. Gore is the author of Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War and co-editor of Want to Start of Revolution: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle. Her work has been supported by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Tamiment Library at NYU, and the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University.

Yvette Gullatt is the inaugural Vice Provost for Diversity and Engagement and Chief Outreach Officer for the University of California system. In her role, she is responsible for translating UC’s vision of inclusive excellence into sustainable policies, practices, and programs. Her responsibilities include advancing UC-wide progress to foster equitable campus climates and to achieve greater diversity among students, faculty and staff; oversight of systemwide academic preparation and educator professional development programs; and partnerships with educational institutions and community organizations to improve student opportunity and enhance the accessibility of degrees. Yvette holds BA, MA and PhD degrees in English from UC Berkeley.

Anirban Gupta-Nigam is a Postdoctoral Scholar at UCHRI. He holds a PhD in Visual Studies from UC Irvine and manages UCHRI’s initiative on liberal arts literacies. His dissertation examined how foreclosures of environmental crises through the rhetorical and material production of frontiers sustain American modes of futurity, effecting—differentially—the lives of normative subjects and racialized others of the settler state. He has published work on invocations of blackness in infrastructure studies, the relational politics of (big) data, and corruption as a mode of governing unstable postcolonial media ecologies. Presently, he is preoccupied with a project on emotional reticence and inexpressivity as a response to inhabiting abstract systems.

Liz Halimah is the Associate Vice Provost with the Office of Diversity and Engagement at the UC Office of the President. Halimah has more than 20 years of service to the University of California across a variety of domains and brings a distinguished background in equity, inclusion and diversity. She comes to the Office of the President from UC Berkeley, where she served as the Assistant Vice Chancellor and Chief of Staff in the Division of Equity & Inclusion. Previously, Liz served as Director of Planning and Analysis at the Office of the President for student academic preparation and educational partnerships. Liz was also Director of the Early Academic Outreach Program, where she managed UC Berkeley’s largest program to help low-income, first-generation students prepare for college through advising and academic enrichment opportunities.

Douglas M. Haynes is the Vice Provost for Academic Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, Professor with the Department of History and Senior Faculty Director and Medical Humanities Initiative at UC Irvine. He published his first book Imperial Medicine: Patrick Manson and the Consequest of Tropical Disease which recasts the surprisingly insular narrative about the history of British medicine and science. His most recent project continues his interest in the history of British medicine. It will provide a broad overview of the relationship of British medicine to the British Empire from the mid-nineteenth century until the beginning of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s. The second project, provisionally titled “A Question of Taste,” examines the role of the politics of racial subordination in the making of the American Medical Association from its founding in 1847 until 1900. Rather than viewing race as marginal to the history of medicine in the United States, he argues that it was and remains central to the development of American medicine.

Inés Hernández-Ávila is a Professor of Native American Studies at UC Davis and one of the founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). She is Nimipu (Nez Perce), enrolled on the Colville Reservation in Washington, and Tejana. In 2009, she received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the UC Davis Academic Senate. She was a Co-Director of the UC Davis (Mellon funded) Social Justice Initiative (2013- 2016). In 2017, she received the Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award from the Latino Studies section of the Latin American Studies Association. She regularly teaches Summer Abroad in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, with a focus on the Zapatistas and on contemporary Mayan writers and visual artists. Her research focuses on contemporary indigenous expressions of personal and collective autonomy and creativity in the service of social justice.

Maria Herrera-Sobek is Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara. She received her PhD from UC Los Angeles in Hispanic Languages and Literature. She is the author of numerous books and is the editor of the three-volume encyclopedia: Celebrating Latino Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Cultural Traditions. Herrera-Sobek is a recipient of the international award, Galardón Luis Leal II and is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society and the International Ballad Association. She received the Américo Paredes Prize from the American Folklore Society. She was also granted the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Division on Chicana and Chicano Literature (Modern Language Association) in 2004.

Pamela D. Jennings is Executive Director of Graduate Studies at the Office of the President (UCOP) for the University of California where she develops, leads and supports systemwide initiatives and efforts to advance graduate education at UC. Prior to working at UC Office of the President she served as Vice President for Student Affairs at California College of the Arts (CCA) overseeing all aspects of student affairs for undergraduate and graduate students. In addition to her executive leadership role at CCA Pamela has extensive leadership experience in graduate education at UC Berkeley, including having directed outreach, retention and diversity affairs for ten years at the Graduate Division. She earned her BA with highest distinction, in Mass Communications from UC Berkeley and MFA from UC Los Angeles. Pamela has 25+ years of experience working on behalf of higher education and is committed to advancing equity and inclusion.

Gaye Theresa Johnson is Associate Professor with the Department of Chicana/o Studies at UC Los Angeles. Her first book, Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles (University of California Press) is a history of civil rights and spatial struggles among Black and Brown freedom seekers and cultural workers in LA. Johnson’s current work includes an edited volume on The Futures of Black Radicalism, co-edited with Alex Lubin, and a single-authored book currently titled These Walls Will Fall: Protest at the Intersection of Immigrant Detention and Mass Incarceration. In it, she demonstrates how visual and aural protest art constitute one of the most significant discourses of resistance to twentieth and 21st century anti-immigrant and pro- carceral policy and practices, revealing how expressive cultures enact an alternative narrative history about migration, race, and power.

Jerry Kang is Distinguished Professor of Law, Distinguished Professor of Asian American Studies, Korea Times Endowed Chair, and Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at UC Los Angeles. Jerry Kang graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College (physics) and Harvard Law School, where he was a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. After clerking for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, he started his teaching career at UC Los Angeles in 1995. A leading scholar on implicit bias, critical race studies, and communications, VC Kang regularly collaborates across disciplinary boundaries on wide-ranging scholarly, educational, and advocacy projects. An inspiring teacher, he has received UCLA’s highest recognition: the Eby Art of Teaching Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2015, he entered senior administration as a Vice Chancellor, with the mission to “build equity for all.”

Anneeth Kaur Hundle is Dhan Kaur Sahota Presidential Chair of Sikh Studies and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine. She received her doctorate in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is currently a UC President’s Faculty Research Fellow at UCI where she is completing her book manuscript, “Unsettling Citizenship: African Asian Lives and the Politics of Racialized Insecurity in Transnational Uganda”, an ethnographic exploration of liberal and non-liberal African-Asian citizenship formations in Uganda. Prior to her current position, she was an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Associated Faculty in the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Program at University of California, Merced. She also previously taught in the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Ph.D. Program at the Makerere Institute of Social Research at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

Robin Kelley is Distinguished Professor of History & Gary B. Nash EndowedChairinU.S.HistoryatUCLA. HisbooksincludeThelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009); Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012); Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002); Race Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (1997); Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class (1994); and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (1990).

Jane Komori is an activist, farmer, and PhD student in the History of Consciousness Department at UC Santa Cruz. She holds a BA First Class with Distinction in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies and humanities from Simon Fraser University and is a Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada doctoral fellow. Informed by a professional farming practice, organizing in feminist and social justice communities, and literary and creative work, Jane pursues interdisciplinary research that is concerned with Japanese Canadian identity since their internment during the Second World War. Jane’s research investigates how Japanese Canadians have built and maintained cultural identity and spaces of home and belonging in spite of displacement through alternative food systems.

Herbie Lee, Professor of Statistics in the Jack Baskin School of Engineering, and Campus Diversity Officer for Faculty, has been Vice Provost for Academic Affairs (VPAA) at UC Santa Cruz since September 2010. He provides administrative leadership in key academic areas, including program development and review, resource allocation, leadership development, accreditation, administrative processes, and faculty policy; he oversees the Academic Personnel Office, the UCSC Arboretum, the Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning, and Online Education Initiatives. He also serves as the campus’s chief diversity officer for faculty — helping promote diversity, equity, and inclusion at UCSC.

Rachel Lim is a doctoral student with the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation project examines the cultural, economic, and migratory circuits between South Korea, the U.S. and Mexico. From 2017-2018, she was a Fulbright García-Robles research scholar at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa in Mexico City. Before coming to UC Berkeley, she was a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in South Korea from 2012-2014.

Shana Melnysyn is the Research Grants Manager at UCHRI. Shana joined UCHRI after completing her PhD in anthropology and history at the University of Michigan. She is passionate about helping the humanities flourish and bringing humanistic knowledge to broader publics. Her research interests include microhistories of conflict, interpersonal power dynamics, and racialized identities under Portuguese colonialism in Angola, where she did her dissertation research. Shana manages UCHRI’s competitive grants programs across the UC system. She also contributes to Institute initiatives such as Horizons of the Humanities and Humanists@Work.

Marlené Mercado is a second year PhD student in the Cultural Studies Graduate Group at UC Davis. As a scholar activist her research is focused on the police state, prison abolition and the solidarity that seeps through concrete walls between inside and outside prisons. Because Marlené is a firm believer in praxis, she is committed to engaging in “on the ground” activism. She spent the 2016 summer in Tijuana and 2017 summer in Juárez as a member of the UCHRI-funded “Humanizando la Deportación” project assisting in documenting digital stories of individuals who had experienced deportation. She also works with currently incarcerated folks through the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee chapter in Sacramento.

Mireille Miller-Young is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara working at the intersection of black feminist theory and sexual archives. She is the author of A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography (Duke University Press, 2014), which was awarded the Sara A. Whaley Prize by the National Women’s Studies Association, and the John Hope Franklin Prize by the American Studies Association. Dr. Miller-Young is also an editor of The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure (The Feminist Press, 2013) and of the anthology, Black Sexual Economies: Race and Sex in a Culture of Capital (University of Illinois Press, 2019).

Kit Myers is Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced. He is an executive committee member for the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture; advisor for the Adoption Museum Project; and editorial board member for the Ohio State University Press book series: Formations: Adoption, Kinship, and Culture. He has published journal articles on transnational adoption discourse and critical adoption studies as well as a book chapter on transnational adoptee citizenship and deportation. Myers has also published an online piece and Op-Ed about policing and sits on the UC Merced Police Advisory Board.

Renee Navarro, PharmD, MD is the Vice Chancellor of Diversity and Outreach at UC San Francisco. In that capacity, she serves as a campus expert on diversity initiatives and best practices, and leads the effort with the development and execution of a strategic plan for increased diversity, equity and inclusion at UCSF. Besides her efforts at UCSF and in partnership with the UC Office of the President, Dr. Navarro serves as the Chair elect of the Group on Diversity and Inclusion (GDI) from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). In the community, she has served on the San Mateo Commissions on the Status of Women, the San Mateo Commission on Disabilities and was the founding Chair of the Group on Women in Medicine and Science for the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Trung Phan Quoc Nguyen is a PhD Candidate in the History of Consciousness Department at UC Santa Cruz. His dissertation studies how the signification of Vietnam has shifted and transformed the global history of perception and aesthetics in the age of permanent war.

Becky R. Petitt is the Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at UC San Diego. Dr. Petitt has over 25 years of progressive administrative experience in equity, diversity, and inclusion work across the higher education community. Prior to UC San Diego, she was Associate Vice President and Chief of Staff for the Office of Diversity at Texas A&M University. As a scholar-practitioner, Dr. Petitt provided vision and leadership for Texas A&M University’s Diversity Plan, which is acknowledged as a national exemplar of sustainable institutional change. She is a nationally recognized consultant, specializing in equity and diversity in higher education, organizational learning and organizational change.

Justin Phan (he/him, they/them) is a doctoral student with the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside. Justin Phan previously earned a BA at UC Davis in Women and Gender Studies, Asian American Studies, and Sociology, and just completed an MA in Ethnic Studies and an MA in Southeast Asian Studies at UC Riverside. Justin Phan is currently pursuing a PhD at UC Riverside in the Department of Ethnic Studies with research interests in feminist theories and epistemologies, queer of color critique, critical fashion and textile studies, postcolonial theories and historiographies, Southeast Asian/American Studies, and visual culture.

Eric Porter is Professor of History and History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, where he also holds appointments in the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Program and Music Department. His research and teaching interests include Black cultural and intellectual history, US cultural history, jazz and improvisation studies, urban studies, and critical race and ethnic studies. He is the author of What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists (University of California Press, 2002), winner of an American Book Award; The Problem of the Future World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Race Concept at Midcentury (Duke University Press, 2010); and, with the photographer Lewis Watts, New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition (University of California Press, 2013).

Luanna Putney joined UC Merced in 2014 as the Associate Chancellor & Senior Advisor to the Chancellor. Luanna oversees the Ethics and Compliance Program and Office of Campus Climate. As UC Merced’s Campus Ethics and Compliance Officer (CECO) and Locally Designated Official (LDO), Luanna is responsible for investigations into allegations of harassment, discrimination, retaliation and improper governmental activities. She also has administrative oversight for Internal Audit, the Privacy Office and the Policy Office. Luanna is also responsible for oversight of the Office of Campus Climate that includes the Ombuds Office and the Campus Advocacy, Resources & Education (CARE) Office for victims of sexual violence. Her primary responsibilities include facilitating a campus climate of inclusion, respect, diversity, dignity, equity and access while ensuring effective campus processes and communication around compliance issues to promote adequacy of policies and procedures, training and education, monitoring and auditing, reporting and investigating, discipline and enforcement, and prevention of non-compliance.

Rahim Reed is the Associate Executive Vice Chancellor for Campus Community Relations at UC Davis. He has more than 35 years of experience in higher education administration, student services, affirmative action policy development and diversity and inclusion initiatives at five major universities. From 1998 until September 2001, he served as the Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations at the University of Florida. Prior to becoming director of the Center, Rahim also served as the Assistant Dean for Student and Minority Affairs at the University of Florida, College of Law from 1988 to 2001. He also chaired the University of Florida’s Council on Affirmative Action from 1994 to 1996. Rahim served as Assistant Dean in the Office of African American Affairs at the University of Virginia from 1986 to 1988 and has also taught and held positions as a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Florida College of Law and a Teaching Assistant at Rutgers University Law School.

Dylan Rodriguez is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at UC Riverside, and was elected Chair of the UCR Academic Senate by his faculty peers in 2016 and again in 2018. The author of two books and more than fifty published essays, Dr. Rodriguez has helped build the foundations for three emergent scholarly fields: critical carceral studies, critical ethnic studies, and critical Filipino studies. He has spoken and written in a wide cross-section of scholarly and popular venues, including Social Text, Huffington Post Live, American Quarterly, The Real News Network, and Radical History Review. His thinking, writing, and teaching focus on how regimes of social liquidation, cultural extermination, physiological evisceration, and racist terror become normalized features of everyday life in the alleged “post-civil rights” and “post-racial” moments. He asks, What forms of collective genius and creativity emerge from such conditions, and how do these insurgencies envision—and practice— transformations of power and community?

Richard T. Rodriguez is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at UC Riverside, where he is also cooperating faculty in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science. He specializes in Latina/o/x literary and cultural studies, film and visual culture, and queer studies with additional interests in transnational cultural studies, popular music studies, and comparative ethnic studies. After receiving his BA in English from UC Berkeley and his PhD in the History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz, he taught for several years at Cal State LA and the University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign before joining the UC Riverside faculty in 2016. The author of Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 2009), he is completing two projects: “Undocumented Desires: Fantasies of Latino Male Sexuality” and “Latino/U.K.: Postpunk’s Transatlantic Touches.”

Ana Elizabeth Rosas is an Associate Professor with the Department of Anthropology & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Ana Elizabeth Rosas received her doctorate in history from the University of Southern California. Her book, Abrazando El Espiritu magnifies the emotive investments of mid- twentieth century Mexican immigrant families in Mexico and the United States. At UCI, she has served as director of undergraduate studies for the department of Chicano-Latino Studies (2012-2016), DECADE Faculty Mentor (2015-2017), co-director of this campus’s Summer Academic Enrichment Program (2017), and is currently a campus representative for Imagining America. Her investment in undergraduate education has inspired her teaching of civic engagement seminars in support of non-profit organizations that work closely with adolescent girls and boys and undocumented immigrant students in Orange County, California, and to advise undergraduate students conducting original primary research on women’s history, immigrant trajectories, and gender identities.

Santana Ruiz is the Deputy Director at the Center for Educational Partnerships at the University of California, Irvine. He is responsible for overseeing all K-12 academic preparation programs which include: EAOP, Cosmos, Gifted Students Academy, Upward Bound, GEAR UP, and American Indian programs. He is also responsible for overseeing the Community College academic preparation programs out of the Center. Mr. Ruiz also serves as a reader in the UCI Office of Admissions and Relations with Schools. In addition, he is a lecturer in the School of Social Science at UC Irvine and also teaches a “ Basic Computer” course in the Rancho Santiago Community College District. Mr. Ruiz received his Master of Education (E.d.M.) with a concentration in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from Harvard University. His research focused on the relationship between institutions of higher education and community based organizations. He received his BA in Political Science from UC Irvine.

Julie Salgado serves as the Past President on the UC Riverside Staff Assembly Executive Board, and as the Co-Chairperson of the Chancellor’s Task Force on Staff Engagement. Previously, Julie led the Diversity & Inclusion Workgroup for the Council of University of California Staff Assemblies, in which she presented a white paper to UC President Janet Napolitano. She currently works as an Event Services Coordinator for CHASS Facilities Management, overseeing major events and managing Box Office operations for the University Theatre. Possessing more than 20 years of service at UC Riverside, she takes pride in promoting diversity on campus. She holds a BS in Business Administration from UC Riverside, and a MA in Management from the University of Redlands. She and her husband currently reside in Riverside County, where she enjoys volunteering with youth groups. Julie is deeply devoted to promoting the health and welfare of children, helping them to develop open-minded perspectives and self- esteem.

Teresa Maria Linda Scholz (PhD, University of Colorado, Boulder) is the Campus Diversity Officer for Staff and Students with the Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Scholz is a first generation US American and a first-generation college graduate, raised in Guatemala and the United States. She positions herself as a Critical Latina/Latin American Transnational Feminist Scholar in Communication Studies, who is interested in understanding culturally situated theories of counterhegemonic enactments of rhetorical agency. Dr. Scholz has also completed a certification in mindful facilitation techniques. As a scholar- practitioner and Campus Diversity Officer, she is interested in identifying discursive and material counterhegemonic practices in social justice education, the connection between voice, victimhood, and agency, and the role that we all play in challenging, preventing, and resisting different forms of oppression.

Savannah Shange is a Black queer feminist scholar who works at the intersections of race, place, sexuality, and the state. She is assistant professor of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz and holds a joint PhD in Africana Studies and Education from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as BFA in Theater from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Tufts. Her research interests include gentrification, multiracial coalition, ethnographic ethics, Black femme gender, and abolition. Her first book, Progressive Dystopia: Abolitionist Anthropology in the New San Francisco (Duke University Press, forthcoming), is an ethnography of the afterlife of slavery. She an alumni member of the BYP100 organization, and is proud to serve on the advisory board of the Black Brilliance Network, a learning community for educators and scholars invested in transformative justice.

Eboni Shaw is the Department Manager and Student Advisor for the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She currently serves as a member of UCLA’s ACE committee (Advising Communities of Excellence). She is a native Angeleno and graduate of Mount Saint Mary’s University.

Ma Vang is an Assistant Professor and Chair of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced. Her interdisciplinary research advances a refugee critique of secrets, national history, and knowledge production. She specializes in critical Hmong Studies to demonstrate how Hmong have been racialized through their history of involvement in the U.S. “secret war” in Laos. Her book manuscript examines how secrecy structures both official knowledge and refugee epistemologies about war and migration. She is the co-editor of Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), and her writings have been published in positions: asia critique, MELUS, and Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics (University of Washington Press, 2018). She has received several awards including the Ford Dissertation Fellowship, the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the UC Multicampus Research grant to establish the Critical Refugee Studies consortium. She is a founding member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective and co-editor of the Collective’s website.

Jordan Victorian is a doctoral student interested in the potentials of Black/feminist/queer/trans existence. They are part of the Feminist Studies department at UC Santa Barbara. Victorian is broadly interested in Black queer studies and Black feminist thought. Their focus is often on racialized sexuality as a complex space of pleasure, punishment, and political possibilities. Jordan’s current research builds toward research on Black nonmonogamies by exploring the relationships between blackness, marriage and monogamy, and consensual nonmonogamy. They are also involved in “becoming undisciplined,” an academic zine and a developing, collective scholarly effort focused on black study and the academy.

Edwina Welch, Ed.D. has served as the Director of the UCSD Cross-Cultural Center since spring of 1996. In this capacity she works with students, staff and faculty on issues of climate and multiculturalism for UC San Diego and the surrounding San Diego community. Welch has also dose extensive training to staff and student organizations at UC San Diego. Edwina also works in the San Diego Community as a “Working Group Member for Civil Society” at the San Diego Foundation our region wide community foundation. Edwina received her BA in Communication Studies and Business Administration from California State University, Sacramento, a Master’s of Science in Higher Education Administration from the University of Oregon and her Doctorate of Education from a joint program with UC San Diego, San Diego State University, and the California State University at San Marcos. Edwina is a founding member of the California Council for Cultural Centers in Higher Education (CaCCCHE) a regional wide collaborative of higher education cultural centers. Her research and specialty areas include social justice training and practice, retention and campus climate issues, organizational capacity building, and small group communication.

Alyssa West is the Program Coordinator for the Department of Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis. Alyssa West was born and raised in Sacramento, California. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in Chicana/o Studies with a minor in Social and Ethnic Relations from UC Davis and a master’s degree in Higher Education Leadership from CSU Sacramento. As the program coordinator for the Department of Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis, Alyssa’s invaluable role is at the core of the department where she balances the structural demands of the university alongside managing department curriculum, supporting faculty and advocating for students in various capacities. She is keenly aware of the many challenges historically underrepresented faculty and students face while navigating the institution and works towards challenging those barriers daily. 

Sandra Wulff is Assistant Director of Graduate Studies at the University of California, Office of the President. Sandra is responsible for projects involving Graduate Studies research, analysis and reporting as well as UC systemwide initiatives and efforts, including the UC-HBCU Initiative, which aims to increase the number of African American/Black students earning UC PhDs. Before joining UCOP, Sandra administered student affairs for graduate and undergraduate students in the Group in Asian Studies at UC Berkeley. At UCOP Sandra served as a Program Coordinator in the Office of Research and Graduate Studies, managing the Labor and Employment Research Fund and the Pacific Rim Research Program, and led grant proposal solicitation and peer review for a broad portfolio of research grants programs in the Research Grants Program Office. Sandra earned a bachelor’s degree in International Studies from Central Connecticut State University and a master’s in Education from San Francisco State University.

Helga Zambrano is a Doctoral Candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her doctoral research focuses on the intersection of sound, music, and literary production in Nicaragua across the twentieth century. She also works as a Student Affairs Advisor at the UCLA Scholarship Resource Center. In this role, she mentors undergraduate students in the searching, planning, and writing process for funding opportunities within the private sector. When she’s not teaching, researching, or advising students, Helga sings alto for the UCLA Chorale and plays flute for various music groups.