Faculty

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...

Mayo Buenafe-Ze is a bilingual immigrant and multi-ethnic indigenous Filipina who has lived most of her life between the Philippines and California. She is a scholar/educator/researcher, food and cultural events experience curator, and community organizer who aims to decolonize education and support youth leadership and development. Since 2007, she has been in research and academia in the Philippines, Netherlands, and the U.S. She has done ethnographic studies with the Ifugao peoples from the...

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...

Melissa Ann Canlas is Assistant Professor in International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco (USF). Her work focuses on Ethnic Studies, issues of educational equity, critical leadership, critical pedagogies, and human rights, particularly for immigrant and refugees and students of color. She has over fifteen years of work as an educator, and her work experience includes teaching a wide variety of Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies classes at the undergraduate...

Kevin M. Chun, PhD, is professor of psychology and co-founding faculty member of USF’s Asian American Studies and Critical Diversity Studies programs. Professor Chun uses community-based research methods to study acculturation effects on Asian American immigrant health and psychosocial adjustment. His research program aims to improve acculturation theory and measures, and develop health interventions that reduce immigrant families’ acculturation stress. Prof. Chun was co-principal investigator...

J. Garrett-Walker is an associate professor in the department of psychology at the University of San Francisco. She earned a B.A. from University of San Francisco and a PhD from the Graduate Center of City University of New York. Professor Garrett-Walker is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on multiple identity development for Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) emerging adults. She utilizes quantitative and qualitative methodologies to examine the...

Roberto Gutiérrez Varea began his career in theater in his native Argentina. His research and creative work focuses on live performance as means of resistance and peacebuilding in the context of social conflict and state violence. Varea's stage work in the United States includes directing premieres of works by Migdalia Cruz, Ariel Dorfman, Cherríe Moraga, and José Rivera, among others. He is the founding artistic director of Soapstone Theatre Company, a collective of male ex-offenders and women...

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:...

Evelyn Y. Ho is a professor of communication studies, Asian Pacific American studies, and critical diversity studies, and a faculty chair of the Honors College at the University of San Francisco. Beginning with an understanding that communication is a cultural activity and that health care systems and beliefs are profoundly cultural, Professor Ho's teaching and research focus broadly on the intersections of health, culture, and communication, with a specific focus on the use and cultural...

Associate Professor, received her Masters in Comparative Literature at San Francisco State University and her PhD from the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at Stanford University. Her areas of focus include Mexican, Border and Chicana/o Literary and Cultural Studies, with an interest in Feminist and Performance Studies.

Hello, and welcome! In case you parachuted onto this page via Google, I'm the David Kim who is a philosophy prof at the U. of San Francisco, not the concert violinist, the cosmetic surgeon, the CEO of Baja Fresh (featured on Undercover Boss), etc., etc. Sorry, but I can't play Mozart, safely administer a nip and tuck, or get you a job making burritos. There's a film, Grace Lee, portraying the lives of several semi-randomly chosen women named "Grace Lee." With the sheer number of David Kims,...

Brandi Lawless is an associate professor in the communication studies department. Broadly, her research can be defined as critical intercultural communication — an area of research concerned with understanding power, privilege, marginalization, hegemony, and ideologies. She is interested in the ways individuals (re)produce and communicate identities and subjectivities at the intersections of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and other aspects of identity. Her most recent work has explored...

Genevieve Leung is the academic director of the Asian Pacific Studies MA program and director of the Asian Pacific American Studies minor. She has a BA in linguistics from UC Berkeley and dual MA degrees in linguistics (TESOL) and education (Language and Literacy) from UC Davis. She received her PhD in Educational Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught high school English in Japan, as well as English writing, effective communication, and reading and vocabulary courses...

Evelyn I. Rodriguez is a second-generation Pinay, who was born in Honolulu, raised in San Diego, and is now an Associate Professor for the University of San Francisco's Department of Sociology. She also is a faculty member in Critical Diversity Studies, Asian American Studies, and the Maria Elena Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from UC San Diego as a Sociology major/Ethnic Studies minor; and received her MA and PhD from UC Berkeley's...

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...

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 serves as Director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program. His research and teaching interests include urban and suburban studies, California and the U.S. West, Asian American history, and the twentieth-century United States. He received a PhD and an MA in History from Northwestern University, and a BA in American Studies and Political Science from George Washington University. Prof. Zarsadiaz was a fellow at both the Smithsonian...