Faculty

Jennifer Turpin joined USF's faculty in 1991 after receiving a doctorate in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She has received USF's Distinguished Teaching Award and the College Service Award, as well as an honorary doctorate from USF in 2015. She founded USF's Women's Studies program and served as chair of the sociology department before spending 17 years in the university administration, as provost (2010-2015); dean (2003-2010); and associate dean (1997-2003).

Her research...

Alexandra is a musicologist specializing in the Italian Renaissance, especially the madrigal, Italian opera, Feminist criticism, Romantic piano music, and German Baroque choral music. She holds a laurea (BA/MA equivalent) in Slavic Studies and Philology from the University of Pisa (Italy) and both a Masters and a PhD in musicology from Harvard University. She has published and read papers on Renaissance, operatic, and gender related topics in several journals and conferences. She is now working...

Bernadette Barker-Plummer received her PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, her MA from the University of Texas at Austin, and her BA from Edinburgh University in Scotland. Her research interests are in media, social movements, and social change. Some of her work can be found in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Feminist Media Studies, Journalism Quarterly, Journalism Monographs, and Peace Review. She teaches Gender and Media, Introduction to...

Paula Birnbaum is the Academic Director of the Museum Studies Master of Arts Program and Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at USF. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art and holds a doctorate in Art History from Bryn Mawr College. Professor Birnbaum is a former Fulbright Scholar and fellow at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University.

Birnbaum’s research focuses on modern and contemporary art in relationship to gender and sexuality, as well as...

Carolyn Brown received her PhD in English from the University of California–Davis. Her specialization is Shakespeare and Renaissance / Early Modern literature, from a feminist, psychoanalytic, historicist, and /or political perspective. She has published in several anthologies on Shakespeare and the following journals: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900; Texas Studies in Literature and Language; Studies in Philology; American Imago; Literature and Psychology; Clio: A Journal of Literature...

Sarah Burgess is an Associate Professor in Communication Studies, Gender and Sexualities Studies, and Critical Diversity Studies. Working at the intersections of rhetorical theory, political theory, legal theory, philosophy, and gender and sexualities studies, she examines the rhetorical contours of recognition in order to understand the possibilities and limits of justice. She recently edited a special issue of Philosophy & Rhetoric that brought together authors from several disciplines to...

Lilian Dube is an associate professor and former chair of the Theology and Religious Studies Department at the University of San Francisco where she started in 2006 after a decade of teaching at universities in the USA and UK and the University of Zimbabwe, with tenure. In 1999, she made history as the first Black woman to earn a Doctor of Theology degree from Stellenbosch University.

She is the executive director of the film, USF in Zambia: HIV/AIDS and Social Justice, co-author of African...

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, the Mae and Benjamin Swig Professor in Jewish Studies and the founding Director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, has been at USF since 2007. An educator for more than two decades, his primary academic interest is the intersection between identity formation, social justice, and marginalized groups.

Aaron completed his PhD in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied the History of Religions...

Aysha Hidayatullah is Associate Professor of Islamic studies and teaches undergraduate courses on Islam, gender, race, and ethics. She received her MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her BA in Women's Studies from Emory University. She began teaching at the University of San Francisco in 2008.

Her research interests include feminist exegesis of the Qur'an; representations of women in early Islamic history; constructions of femininity and...

Elisabeth Jay Friedman was awarded her BA by Barnard College (1988) and her MA/PhD by Stanford University (1997). She is the author of Unfinished Transitions: Women and the Gendered Development of Democracy in Venezuela, 1936-1996 (Penn State Press, 2000), and the co-author of Sovereignty, Democracy, and Global Civil Society: State-Society Relations at UN World Conferences (SUNY Press, 2005). She has also published articles on transnational women's organizing, women's rights in Latin America...

Adrienne Johnson is a human geographer who earned a PhD from Clark University. Her dissertation looked at the political ecology and critical resource geographies of Ecuador’s palm oil industry with a specific focus on Afro-Ecuadorian, smallholder, and company participation in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification scheme. She received an MA in geography and a BA in international development studies and political science from York University, Canada. Before joining the...

Rebecca Mason is originally from Nova Scotia, Canada, where she completed her BA and MA in philosophy at Dalhousie University. In 2015, she received her PhD in philosophy from Northwestern University. She specializes in metaphysics (especially social metaphysics), feminist philosophy, and social and political philosophy. She also has interests in epistemology and philosophy of language, especially where these intersect with her areas of specialization.

Stuart McKee is an Associate Professor of Design at the University of San Francisco. As an environmental graphic designer, Stuart has designed exhibition typography for the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland (as Senior Graphic Designer for the Burdick Group; San Francisco); and the United States Pavilion at the 1992 World's Fair in Seville, Spain (as Senior Graphic Designer for Staples & Charles Ltd; Washington, DC). As a print designer...

Kathryn Nasstrom teaches in the U.S. field and specializes in civil rights history, women’s history, oral history, and memory & narrative studies. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993 and has been at USF since 1994.

She is the author of Everybody's Grandmother and Nobody's Fool: Frances Freeborn Pauley and the Struggle for Social Justice (Cornell University Press, 2000), and she has published in the Journal of American History and the Oral History...

Prof. Olmedo general area of expertise is Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies. Her research interests focus on Gothic Literature, Women and Gender Studies, and Emergent Horror Cinemas. She teaches courses in language and culture and also literature and film, such as: Feminist Theory and Feminist Discourse, The Revenge of the Monsters and Conflicts and Confluences in the Spanish speaking world. She is the curator of the Latin Horror Film Festival at USF.

On sabbatical 2022-2023

Quỳnh N. Phạm is an Assistant Professor in the International Studies Department. She received her PhD in Political Science at the University of Minnesota, with a double focus on international relations and political theory. Her research and teaching interests include global inequalities, forms of violence, decolonization, and the politics of imagining Asia. Her scholarship attends to conditions of domination as well as subaltern endurance and dissent in the contexts of...

Nikki has a longstanding passion for sociology, social justice, independent films, traveling, dancing, and spending time with family and friends. She has a teenage son who makes her laugh and think every day, and they have two miniature wiener dogs named Jennifer and Madeline (a.k.a. Big J in the House and Mad Dog).

Nikki earned her PhD in sociology from Ohio State University. Her research has mostly focused on the mobilization and outcomes of the workplace movement for lesbian, gay, and...

Cecília Santos received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master in Law from the University of São Paulo. She joined the University of San Francisco in 2001, and since 2006 she is also a research member of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. She teaches courses on gender and development, globalization, sociology of law, and Brazilian culture and society.

Her research focuses on legal mobilization within and across...

Stephanie Sears received her BA in psychology from Stanford University, and her MA and PhD from Yale University's joint program in African American Studies and Sociology. She teaches several courses, including Introduction to Sociology; Sociology of Gender; African American Culture and Society; Social Problems; Critical Race and Ethnicity; Community Organizing; and the Honors Thesis Seminar. She is a faculty member of the African American Studies and Gender Studies programs, and director of the...

Jacqueline Taylor is the author of Reflecting Subjects: Passion, Sympathy and Society in Hume's Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2015). She is editor of Reading Hume on the Principles of Morals (Oxford University Press, 2020), and Cambridge Companion to Hume (Cambridge University Press, 2009). She has authored many articles and book chapters on David Hume, Adam Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment, the science of human nature, and on various areas in moral psychology. She is a participant in...

Christine Young is Director of the Honors College. As a feminist theater practitioner, Professor Young’s research combines creative and scholarly work. She develops and directs plays about social issues affecting women’s lives, practices creative casting that seeks to put as many female performers onstage as possible, mentors young women theater artists, and promotes a world where women’s lives are understood not as special interest stories, but rather as essential human stories. Prior to...

James Zarsadiaz is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program. He specializes in urban and suburban history, Asian American history, and the twentieth-century United States. Prof. Zarsadiaz was a fellow at both the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and Asian Pacific American Center. Prior to entering academia, James worked in the U.S. House of Representatives.

He is the author of Resisting Change in Suburbia: Asian...

Camille Shira Angel, an adjunct professor in the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, is also an ordained rabbi from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and the author of articles including "Crafting a Liturgical Mirror," in the wonderful new anthology The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality, and "Ruach Acheret-Ruach Hakodesh: Different Spirit-Sacred Spirit" in Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.

She was the spiritual leader...