Faculty

Samira Abdur-Rahman holds a PhD in English from Rutgers University. She completed her BA in English Literature and Africana Studies at Rutgers University and an MA in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University. Previous to joining USF, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Frederick Douglass Institute at the University of Rochester. Her teaching and research interests include: African American Literature; childhood studies; autobiography studies; literary geography; and African...

Candice Harrison joined the department in Fall 2008 after completing her PhD at Emory University. Her teaching interests span the eras of colonial and nineteenth century U.S. history, and include the subjects of economic and labor history, African American history, American popular culture, and comparative race and slavery in the Atlantic World. Recently, Dr. Harrison received a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to support her current book manuscript entitled "Democratizing the Market:...

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...

Sonja Martin Poole is an internationally recognized lecturer and researcher on transformative and multicultural marketing strategy and marketing education. With particular emphases on creating and communicating value for nonprofit and public sector organizations and the social impact of marketing, Poole explores topics in the domains of marketing ethics, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, diversity, education, public policy, and social welfare. As an associate professor of...

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...

Ronald R. Sundstrom is a professor of philosophy and a member of USF’s African American Studies program, who also teaches for the university’s Honors College. He is the humanities adviser for the SF Urban Film Festival and a co-convener of the Black Philosophy Consortium. Professor Sundstrom is involved with academic organizations seeking to build bridges between academic philosophy and public policy, such as the Public Philosophy Network, the North American Society for Social Philosophy, and...

Professor James Lance Taylor is from Glen Cove, Long Island. He is author of the book Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama, which earned 2012 "Outstanding Academic Title" - Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. (Ranked top 2 percent of 25,000 books submitted and top 8 percent of 7,300 actually accepted for review by the American Library Association). Rated “Best of the Best.” The hardback version sold out in the U.S. and the paperback version was...