Faculty, Staff, and Students

Director, Associate Professor Lisa Arellano
(Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies)

Lisa Arellano researches and teaches about identity formation, narrative theory and violence.  She recently published a book with Temple University Press entitled Vigilantes and Lynch Mobs: Narratives of Community and Nation.  The book studies the creation, maintenance and circulation of dominant, alternative, and oppositional vigilante stories from the nineteenth-century frontier to the Jim Crow South.  She is currently doing research for a new book focused on uses of violence on the political left, with a particular emphasis on feminist and queer political movements in the U.S. from 1970 to the present.  She holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Modern Thought and Literature and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Humanities from San Francisco State University.

Assistant Professor Sonja Thomas
(Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)

Sonja Thomas’ research sits at the crossroads of two disciplines: Women’s,
Gender and Sexuality Studies and South Asian Studies.  She is currently
working on a book manuscript which operationalizes the feminist concept of
intersectionality by providing a gendered analysis on class, caste, race
and religious belonging in postcolonial India.  She teaches Feminist
Theories and Methodologies, Gender and Human Rights, Gender and
Politicized Religion and Introduction to Women’s Gender and Sexuality
Studies.  An avid tap dancer, she is also developing a course on tap
dancing and Black masculinity.

WGSS Coordinating Committee Members 2012-13

Program Faculty for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Program Staff for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

  • Sherry Berard, Administrative Secretary, ex. 5320