AFFILIATED FACULTY

This list includes not only faculty who teach courses in LGBT Studies, but also those who conduct scholarship on LGBT issues and who are willing to serve as mentors to students.

Pablo Ben, Ph.D. (History, University of Chicago, 2009)
Assistant Professor of History

Professor Ben's scholarship focused on working-class men's sexual lives, including gay men's cultures in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

 

Edith J. Benkov, Ph.D. (French Studies, UCLA, 1979)
Professor of French and European Studies

Professor Benkov’s research centers upon early modern European studies, with a focus on gender, sexuality.  She has published on a variety of topics in that field, including studies on gender and poetry, cross-dressing, and lesbian identity in Medieval and Renaissance Europe.

Douglas S. Bigham, Ph.D. (Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, 2008)
Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Professor Bigham's research in queer linguistics investigates how gay men and lesbians challenge established gender paradigms within linguistic models. He focuses on the importance of recognizing sexuality as an aspect of speaker gender in studies of language change and looks at the use of "straight speech" in performances by heterosexual and homosexual actors.

Michael Borgstrom, Ph.D. (English, UC Davis, 2002)
Associate Professor of English

Professor Borgstrom teaches and writes about American literature, sexuality and gender studies, African American literature, and critical race theory. A former Mellon Foundation fellow, his book Minority Reports: Identity and Social Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century American Literature was published in 2010 by Palgrave Macmillan as part of their Future of Minority Studies series. He is currently at work on a new project, tentatively titled Anxiety Attacks: Queerness and Cultural Tension in American Literary History.

Susan Cayleff, Ph.D. (American Civilization, Brown University, 1983)
Professor of Women’s Studies

Professor Cayleff has published two books about lesbian athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, one of which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.  Her areas of expertise are in body politics and sexualities, health and healing, sports and biography and auto/biographical writing.  She is campus co-chair of SafeZones@SDSU a campus-wide initiative to make our community welcoming, supportive, pro-active and safe for LGBTQI students, faculty, staff and administrators and LGBT Studies internship coordinator.

William F. Eadie, Ph.D. (Communication, Purdue University, 1974)
Professor of Journalism and Media Studies

Professor Eadie has served as Editor of The Journal of Applied Communication Research, and 21st Century Communication: A Reference Handbook. He is the author of " In Plain Sight: Gay and Lesbian Communication and Culture," which appears in a widely used textbook on intercultural communication.  He is currently serving as Editor of the Western Journal of Communication¸ and is writing a book titled, When Communication Became a Discipline.

Sara Giordano, PhD (Neuroscience, Emory University, 2008)
Assistant Professor, Women's Studies

Professor Giordano's area of focus is in feminist science studies. She is interested in democratization of science and questions of scientific accountability more generally. Her recent work has focused on synthetic biology and bioethics. She is also interested in critically examining scientific assumptions and claims about race, gender, sexuality, disability and other socially salient categories of difference.

Victoria González-Rivera, Ph.D. (History, Indiana University, 2002)
Assistant Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies

Professor González-Rivera worked for two years on the Trayectos Project, a San Diego-based NIH funded study dealing with gay and bisexual Mexican immigrant men and their HIV risk.   She has also written on sexuality and politics in Nicaragua.  She is the author of Before the Revolution:  Women’s Rights and Right-Wing Politics in Nicaragua, 1821-1979 (2011) and the co-editor of Radical Women in Latin America:  Left and Right (2001).  Her newest project is “Heteromothernities:  Ideologies of mothering on the U.S.-Mexico Border.”  She is also writing on lgbt life under the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. 

Juan M. Godoy, Ph.D. (Spanish, UC Berkeley, 1993)
Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese

Professor Godoy’s research centers upon twentieth-century gay Spanish poets.  He has published a book and a number of articles on individual poets.  He is the author of several gay-themed poems and short stories.

Yetta Howard, Ph.D. (English, University of Southern California, 2010)
Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Professor Howard's research focuses on 20th- and 21st-century American literary and cultural studies, with a specialization in queer studies, gender and sexuality studies, and feminist theories of race. She has published on topics that include lesbian comix and postpunk film and is working on a book manuscript about ugliness and constructions of sexual identity.

Mary Kelly, Ph.D. (Religion and Ethics, Vanderbilt University, 1993)
Lecturer, Departments of Women’s Studies and Religious Studies

Professor Kelly's primary area of research and writing is the relationship between gender and sexuality and religions.  She is also collaborating with university students and faculty in South Africa to build transnational networks of LGBTQI activism and scholarship.  

Mathew Kuefler, Ph.D. (History, Yale University, 1995)
Professor of History

Professor Kuefler is editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality and specializes in the history of gender and sexuality.  His books have focused on masculinity and gender ambiguity in late antiquity, Christianity and homosexuality in the middle ages, and the history of sexuality.

Jacki Davis Leak, PsyD. (Psychology of Culture and Human Behavior, CSPP/Alliant International University, 2003)
Lecturer, Women's Studies and Psychology

Dr. Leak's dissertation research highlighted women's voices in multicultural contexts. Her ongoing work advocates for social justice and gives voice to our differences.

 

Khaleel Mohammed, Ph. D. (Islamic Studies, McGill University, 2001).
Associate Professor Religious Studies

While his doctoral dissertation was on Islamic law, Professor Mohammed has written extensively in academic journals on human rights and gender relations in Islam. His current research interests are in interfaith and gender relations.

Rebecca Moore, Ph.D. (Religious Studies, Marquette University, 1996)
Chair and Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Professor Moore has written and published on medieval Christian theologians and their debt to Jewish biblical commentary. She co-authored the book A Portable God: The Origin of Judaism and Christianity, with SDSU colleague Risa Levitt Kohn. Dr. Moore also specializes in American Religion, with a specialty on New Religious Movements, where she has concentrated on explicating a group called Peoples Temple and the events at Jonestown, Guyana in November 1978. This effort can be seen on the website http://jonestown.sdsu.edu, and has resulted in the book Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple.

Frank Nobiletti, C.Phil. (University of California at San Diego)
Lecturer, Department of History

Nobiletti's research focused on LGBT community formation in San Diego from the 1970s to the 1990s. Nobiletti is President of Lambda Archives of San Diego, a regional LGBT Archive covering Baja California Norte and the San Diego region.

Walter Penrose, Ph.D. (History, City University of New York, 2006)
Assistant Professor of History

Professor Penrose specializes in the History of Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Greek, Hellenistic, and South Asian contexts.   His forthcoming book, Amazons, Ethnicity, and the Ideology of Courage in Ancient Greek and Asian Cultures,is under contract with Oxford University Press.   He served on the Board of Directors for the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center from 2001-2004.

Esther Rothblum, Ph.D. (Psychology, Rutgers University, 1980)
Professor of Women’s Studies

Professor Rothblum is editor of the Journal of Lesbian Studies, has co-edited over 20 books on lesbian/gay/bisexual issues, and conducts research on lesbian relationships and mental health.

Ronnee Schreiber, Ph.D. (Political Science, Rutgers University, 2000)
Associate Professor, Political Science

Professor Schreiber studies women in American political institutions and women’s activism on public policy issues.  Her book, Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics was published by Oxford University Press in 2008.  In addition to her book, she has published research on media coverage of  women in Congress, how feminist organizations adapt to conservative political climates and how conservative women challenge feminist understandings of gender consciousness. 

Tanis Starck, Ph.D. (Howard University, 1986)
Dr. Tanis Starck is the Director of the SDSU Office of Intercultural Relations, which houses the LGBTQ Resource Area, Women's Resource Area, Mind, Body and Spirit Area and the Cross Cultural Center. While her current research focuses on the development of cultural competency among students in higher education, she served as the Director of AIDS Services in San Francisco and was one of the leading researchers and allies for the LGBT community in the Bay Area since the mid 1980's.  She has presentated and worked with leading AIDS researchers Dr. Robert and Mindy Fullilove.  A recent author Dr. Starck recently developed the first Cultural Competency Certificate program for Students in Higher Education.

James D. Weinrich, Ph.D. (Biology, Harvard University, 1976; M.A. Psychology, SDSU, 2008)
Lecturer
Dr. Weinrich is the author of Sexual Landscapes: Why We Are What We Are, Why We Love Whom We Love (Scribners), and is the editor of the Journal of Bisexuality. He has taught Human Sexuality and several other psychology courses at local colleges, including SDSU, Grossmont College, and Miramar College.