Faculty

Authors Julián Delgado Lopera, Assistant Professor Leticia Hernández-Linares, Norman Velaya, Professor Carolina (Caro) De Robertis and Joseph Cassara.

Graduates, faculty of SF State’s Creative Writing program share powerful stories and poetry that reflect the diversity of the Latinx experience

If you’re looking for a book to read during National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15 ­­– Oct. 15) that will transport you to different worlds within the Latinx community, then look no further than San Francisco State University’s faculty and alumni. The University’s Department of Creative Writing is home to award-winning professors and graduates who have written acclaimed works of prose and poetry.

Poet Leticia Hernández-Linares (MFA, ’20) is both: A graduate of San Francisco State’s MFA program in Creative Writing, she’s now an assistant professor of Latina/Latino Studies at the University. Coming to SF State was a homecoming of sorts, she says, because of the University’s legacy of social justice activism and its talented community of artists. “I’m excited to be a part of a long list of incredible writers in the Bay Area, poet laureates and other writers who have also gone through the program here,” she said.

Hernández-Linares celebrates her Latinx identity daily through her teaching, writing and through San Francisco’s Mission District neighborhood where she lives. National Hispanic Heritage Month just means her schedule gets a bit busier. “It’s kind of like I’m going to the party all year and then everybody else joins me for the month,” she added.

To learn more about her poetry and four other books by faculty or alumni, read more of the story.

Josh Davis

The Politics of Backlash: The forces behind the effort to ‘remove, recall, and replace’ reform-minded prosecutors in the U.S.

The successful 2022 recall of San Francisco’s embattled former district attorney Chesa Boudin was widely reported as the death knell for the progressive prosecutor movement. Assistant Professor of Journalism Josh Davis, who has previously written on the Boudin recall for the Washington Post, posits that the event did not happen in a vacuum but was, in fact, informed by something more complex. Boudin confronted a national, far right backlash against progressive prosecutors by forces that will stop at nothing to protect a system of mass incarceration, of which decades of research have shown to be a discriminatory and racist. His investigation into far right forces attempting to cripple the criminal justice reform movement will result in an exclusive story for a national news outlet.

Arezoo Islami

Exponential Freedom: on the Philosophical Approach to Mathematics

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Arezoo Islami proposes a novel philosophical approach to mathematics; one that promotes freedom and social justice. Her project is twofold. First, to create a teacher training manual to help colleagues in College of Creative & Liberal Arts and beyond teach mathematics in an innovative, philosophical way. Second, to publish two research articles in peer-reviewed journals drawing on her experience in implementing this philosophy and pedagogy of mathematics. The first paper focuses on the philosophical approaches to teaching mathematics. The second paper focuses on the applicability of mathematics in quantum mechanics and draws on her experience of teaching complex mathematical constructs to students who are, at first, terrified of them.

Lissette M. Jiménez

Contextualizing and Curating Painted Funerary Shrouds from Roman Egypt

In her planned book “Funerary Shrouds from Roman Egypt: Contextualizing Sacred Images,” Assistant Professor of Museum Studies Lissette M. Jiménez explores the complex biographies of funerary shrouds from multicultural Roman Egypt within the colonial context in which they were removed from Egypt, the ancient Egyptian context in which they were created and used, and the modern context in which they are displayed to audiences in museums. Unlike earlier scholarship, Jiménez’s research closely examines the physical and functional properties of the under studied and misinterpreted funerary representations and moves toward a recognition of the social dimensions, materiality, and iconographic components of these objects. Funerary shrouds and their contextualization provide an entry point for discussions of identity construction, cultural exchange, museum display, and public perception.

Joshua McVeigh-Schultz

Experiential Climate Futures in VR

Through richly embodied experiences in virtual reality (VR), Assistant Professor of Design Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, plans to depict speculative future scenarios related to climate change. His project seeks to address a key challenge of climate change, that despite its deep involvement with so many aspects of our economy and society, its threat can feel abstracted from our daily lives. While we can imagine its impact on the future, we still confront what futurists lament as an “experiential gulf” between our ability to imagine the future and our ability to experience it. But by simulating possible future scenarios in VR, we can begin to experience the reality of climate change with and through our bodies. The meta-narrative of the VR experience will ground the user in relation to a set of actions that can be taken, or not taken, by society resulting in specific impacts upon the amount of global temperature change.

Shabnam Piryaei

The Victory Belongs to Love

What is the generational cost of state violence against women, and how do women resist this violence daily? This is the central question posed by “The Victory Belongs to Love,” a 30 minute autobiographical documentary to be produced by Assistant Professor of Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts Shabnam Piryaei that explores the relationship between women and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Using mixed media including archival footage, visual art, media sent through mobile devices from Iran, and her own footage taken here in the U.S., she widens the lens—historically and geographically—to consider the stark violence and repression we are now seeing against women in Iran. Piryaei tells this story by looking both at women living in Iran, and those who live in diaspora—including herself.

About the Marcus Early Career Research Award

The Marcus Early Career Research Award is supported by the George and Judy Marcus Funds for Excellence in the Liberal Arts and provides a one-semester leave. It funds projects in research, scholarship and creative activities. Probationary tenure-track faculty in their third, fourth or fifth year are eligible.

Hamid Khani

Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts Professor Hamid Khani will produce “Cultural Harmony: In Search of a Common Ground,” a documentary film that explores the potential role of aesthetics and art as tools for cultural understanding. The documentary will explore five ancient Judeo-Christian monuments in Iran to promote cultural harmony in an effort to dispel narratives of fear, exclusion and mistrust. The documentary is centered on inclusive, diverse and equitable narrative and constructivist frameworks in search of common cultural heritage and similarities between Judeo-Christian, Iranian and Islamic architecture, art, aesthetics and culture.

“I am excited about this project and thankful to both the college committee and the LCA leadership for giving me the opportunity to highlight our common humanities despite all the noise promoting otherness and us against them mentality through my project,” says Khani. “This project is an attempt to contribute to our diverse, yet similar, stories and experiences in line with the LCA's mission ‘to find collective solutions to pressing global and social issues.’”

Johnny Symons

“Get Your 10s” is a feature-length documentary planned by Associate Professor of Cinema Johnny Symons that follows Rashaad Newsome, a Black queer artist from the American South, as he creates his most ambitious project yet: a multi-platform, experiential performance at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory. Complete with a 30-foot hologram, a gospel choir, the premier vogue dancers from the US, Japan, Brazil, and Ukraine, and a spirited non-binary artificial intelligence named Being, Rashaad transforms a historic military building into a sanctuary for healing and celebration. In the process, he reveals how art and ballroom culture can help us collectively imagine a brighter future.

“In the wake of the pandemic and a difficult economy, it’s an especially challenging time to complete a feature-length documentary and this award provides me with the ability to dig deeply into crafting this important story. At a time when LGBTQ+ lives are being increasingly denigrated and legislated, this film showcases the talents of queer, trans and BIPOC artists and dancers and inspires us to use our imaginations to work towards a more equitable world,” says Symons. “The time and funds afforded by this award will go directly towards editing, finishing and releasing the film in festivals and streaming services, with the collaborative support of SFSU students and recent alums.”

Yutian Wong

“Dancing in the Archives of Sincerity” is a book planned by Theatre & Dance Professor Yutian Wong about the intersection of a global health crisis, the resurgence of anti-Asian racism, and dance studies. Using the Korean pop music act BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondon) as a case study, the book examines how conversations about racism/xenophobia, homophobia, cultural hierarchies, and the roles and responsibilities of the artist in society are taking place from the space of Asian popular culture.

“How dance is produced, performed, and taught changed overnight when theaters, studios, and other public spaces closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to Professor Wong. “Long-held assumptions about dance and how to conduct dance research were completely upended, so my book is a response to teaching about dance and doing dance research in the aftermath of a global health crisis. This Marcus Transformative Research Award affords me the time to reflect on this massive disciplinary shift and complete the book manuscript.”

About the The Marcus Transformative Research Award

The Marcus Transformative Research Award provides one semester leave with pay and a $3,000 research budget. The award is made possible by the George and Judy Marcus Funds for Excellence in the Liberal Arts, which was established in 2018 with a $25-million gift to SF State.

Professor of Cinema Daniel Bernardi was profiled in an article about the 2023 GI Film Festival in San Diego.

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San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora now has a "cultural critic" to curate events and programs that "explore film, scholarship, visual art and pop culture." Crosscurrents interviewed San Francisco filmmaker, author, actor and scholar Dr. Artel Great, the first to be in the position.

Listen to the story.

With the help of student researchers, Professor of History Marc Stein published a new study that documents over 600 early LGBTQ protests.

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Professor Sachi Cunningham, a fearless big-wave photographer, was profiled by The New York Times.

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