Faculty

Marco Jacquemet teaches courses in communication and culture, intercultural communication, geographies of communication, and justice and social change. His scholarship focuses on the communicative mutations produced by the circulation of migrants and media idioms in the Mediterranean area. His more recent book project is called Transidioma: Language and Power in the 21st Century. He is also present in Italian media activist networks, where he investigates the link between media and power.

Oren Kroll-Zeldin holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and Social Change from the California Institute of Integral Studies where he also received an MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation. He is the Assistant Director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice where he teaches courses on Jewish culture, identity and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and also serves as the associate director of Hebrew San Francisco: Ulpan, a three-week intensive Hebrew language program...

Vijaya Nagarajan is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and in the Program of Environmental Studies. In addition to teaching at the University of San Francisco, she has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University.

Vijaya's academic interests weave among the fields of Hinduism, Environment, Gender, Ritual, and the Commons. She received her PhD in South Asian Language and Literatures from UC Berkeley. Vijaya has received...

Howard J. De Nike graduated from the University of San Francisco in 1964 with a degree in philosophy, and USF School of Law in 1967 with a Juris Doctorate. Following 23 years of law practice with an emphasis in military matters, De Nike obtained a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of New Mexico, with a dissertation on the fate of the jurists of East Germany after German unification. Professor De Nike has taught at San Francisco State University, University of New Mexico, and the...

George Gmelch is professor of Anthropology at the University of San Francisco. He did his undergraduate work at Stanford and his PhD at UCSB. He is a cultural anthropologist who studies culture change, migration, mobile workers, tourism, and sport cultures. He has done long term field research among Irish Travellers, English Gypsies, Alaskan natives, Caribbean villagers and tourism workers, and return migrants in Ireland, Newfoundland and Barbados. He is the author of 13 books and has written...

Sharon Bohn Gmelch earned a PhD in cultural anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her interests include visual anthropology, gender, ethnicity, and tourism. She is the author of ten books, including Nan: The Life of an Irish Travelling Woman (1986/91), which was a finalist for anthropology's Margaret Mead award, and The Tlingit Encounter with Photography (2008). She also co-produced an ethnographic film on the Tlingit. She has conducted research in Ireland, Barbados...

Pattie Hsu holds a BA in Music Humanities and a BS in Biology from the University of California, San Diego, and a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Berkeley. She arrived at USF in 2009 as adjunct faculty. She teaches musicianship/music theory, popular music, music of the Americas, and music of Asia. Her musical research interests include cultural intersections, community engagement through music, and the interaction of socioeconomics and professionalism.

Rabia Kamal received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of expertise include cultural and visual anthropology, religious and racial politics in the U.S., and the use of social media and new technologies for identity formation and political engagement. Her dissertation focuses on the cultural politics of belonging and identity among Asian American and African American Muslim artists and activists in post-9/11 America. She has also worked and lived in...

John Nelson is Professor of East Asian religions in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Francisco. He is the author of Experimental Buddhism: Innovation and Activism in Contemporary Japan (2013, University of Hawaii; co-winner of the 2014 Numata Prize for 'outstanding book in Buddhist Studies'), two books on Shinto in contemporary Japan (A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine [1996], and Enduring Identities: the Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan [2000]...