Faculty

Karen Francis, PhD, is a professor and co-chair in the Kinesiology Department at the University of San Francisco. She teaches courses in the areas of movement science: Motor Learning, Measurement and Statistics, Neuroscience, Professional Practicum and serves on committees for both the Gerontology and Neuroscience Minors. Dr. Francis's research interests are focused on how we control and coordinate movement and how aging and disease affects our ability to control movements. In one line of...

Patricia teaches bioinformatics, clinical decision support and other courses in the health informatics program and the computer science department. She’s primarily interested in working with students to apply data analytics to the health domain, with the goal of producing software tools that perform analyses for clinicians, researchers, and the public. Collaborating with her students is a big priority for Patricia; a number of them are co-authors of her peer-reviewed articles, and their work...

Karen M. Fraser earned her PhD from Stanford University, where she studied both traditional Japanese art and the history of photography. Her research focuses on modern Japanese visual culture, with particular interests in Japanese photography from ca. 1860 through the 1930s, cross-cultural interactions and influences between Asia and the West, gender issues, and museum and exhibition history. Professor Fraser’s teaching experience includes survey and upper-level courses covering both...

Eileen Fung earned her PhD in medieval literature with a secondary expertise in Asian American literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests lie in examining the intersection of literature and identity through cultural practices. She helped start the Asian American Studies program at USF and has served as both the co-chair and chair of the English Department. At present, she is the Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities.

Cathy Gabor received a BA in English from Bethany College in West Virginia, an MA in English from Indiana University, and a PhD in rhetoric and composition from Texas Christian University. Prior to her arrival at USF in 2012, she was the Writing Program director at San Jose State University. At USF, she teaches RHET 101, 110, 110N, 120, and 205. Cathy's research and teaching interests range from service-learning to writing in electronic environments. Her work has appeared in Reflections: A...

Prof. David Galles received his BS from Stanford University and his MS and PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles. His areas of interest include causal networks, programming languages, artificial intelligence.

Joshua Gamson received his BA from Swarthmore College, and his MA and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, and previously taught at Yale University. He currently teaches Sociology of Popular Culture, Sex and Sexualities, Introduction to Sociology, and Fieldwork in Sociology. His research and teaching focus on the sociology of culture, with an emphasis on contemporary Western commercial culture and mass media; social movements, especially on cultural aspects of contemporary...

Cristina García is the author of seven novels, including: Dreaming in Cuban, nominated for a National Book Award, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, The Lady Matador’s Hotel, King of Cuba, and Here in Berlin. She is the editor of the anthologies Cubanísimo: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature and Bordering Fires: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a Literature and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Hodder...

Christina Garcia Lopez holds a PhD in American Studies with a portfolio in Mexican American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. She completed her BA in English Literature at the University of North Texas and an MA in American Literature and Culture at the University of Leeds. Previous to joining USF, she held a lectureship at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her teaching and research interests include: Latina/o and Chicana/o literature;...