STUDENTS
Cultural Studies First-Year Students
Rusty Bartels
Research Interests: California and the American West, transnational American Studies, tourism & memory, (neo)colonialism, empire & imperialism, federal and militarized landscapes, environmental history
B.A. History (Highest Honors) and Comparative American Studies, Oberlin College, 2010.
B.A. Thesis: "Transient Bodies and the Whiteness of Memory: The 'Nature' of Permanence in Big Sur, CA, 1862-1937"
Evan Buswell
Research interests: critical theory, methodology, science studies, Marxism, critical code studies, history and philosophy of mathematics, the promise
B.A. Philosophy, UC Santa Cruz, 2004
M.A. English, Portland State University, 2011
M.A. Thesis: "The Work of Promising and the Creation of Meaning"
Xan Chacko
Research Interests: the history, philosophy and sociology of science, technology and medicine, 19th century studies, proto-theories of evolutionary biology, the chemical revolution, colonial science.
B.A., Women's Studies and Physics, Wellesley College, 2005.
M.Sc., History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Imperial College and University College, London, 2008
M.A. Thesis: "Natural Monsters: A study of anomalies in nineteenth century Paris"
Ksenia Fedorova
Research Interests: aesthetics, media and media art theory and history, philosophy, critical theory, techno-cultural studies, museology
B.A. Philosophy, Ural State University, Ekaterinburg, Russia, 2003
M.A. Philosophy, Ural State University, Ekaterinburg, Russia, 2005
M.A. Art History, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, 2007
M.A. Thesis: "New Media and Performance Art: Aesthetics and Ethics of the Technological Sublime"
Diana Pardo Pedraza
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Gender and Queer Studies, Disability Studies, Politics of the Identity and Representation, Collective Memory, Cultural Heritage, Modern Latin America History.
B.A., History, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia, 2009
M.A., Cultural Studies, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia, 2010
M.A. Thesis: "Them and Us: Struggles and Contradictions in the Ways of (self)Representation of Women (1930-1932)"
Sophie Sapp
Research Interests: 20th Century Francophone (focus on Caribbean) and early Soviet Literature, Contemporary American Novel, Gastronomy in Literature and Film (focus on myths of cannibalism, food politics, eco-criticism), The Age of Revolution in the Atlantic World, History of Gastronomy, Horror in Literature and Film Postcolonial and Atlantic Studies.
B.A., French Literature, Reed College, 2002
B.A. Thesis: "Literature of the Absurd: Human Activity as the Genesis of Meaning"
M.A., Comparative Literature, San Francisco State University, 2008
M.A. Thesis: "Food Fight: Consuming Power and Cannibalistic Gastronomy in Greenaway and Chamoiseau"
May Ee Wong
Research Interests: history of technology; critical theory; visual culture; critical conceptions of the code/network and the city/urban space; representations of the global; systems of organization and complexity; militarised logic and culture
B.A. in English Language and Literature, (Honours in English Literature), National University of Singapore, 2003.
B.A. Thesis: “The Code: Control in Information and Communications Technology”
M.A. in Literary Studies (Research), National University of Singapore, 2011
M.A. Thesis “Targeting Theory: Criticality and the City”
Cultural Studies Second-Year Students
Trisha Barua
Research Interests: cultural consumption and appropriation, diaspora studies, ethnic studies epistemologies, food studies, liberal multiculturalism and post-racism, transnational feminisms, racial/ethnic formations, visual and material culture
B.A. American Culture (Highest Honors) and History of Art, University of Michigan, 2008.
B.A. Thesis: "India Abroad: The Politics of Identity in 'American Desi' and 'The Namesake'"
Stephanie Maroney
Research Interests: food, cookbooks, colonialism, feminist theory
B.A. English and Women's Studies, Arizona State University, 2005.
M.A., English Literature, Arizona State University, 2008
M.A. Thesis: "From Curry to Curry Powder: Incorporating England's Colonial Encounters in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Cookbooks"
Elisa Oceguera
Research Interests: food politics, critical race theory, environmental justice, testimonios, autonomous marxism, queer theory, postcolonial theory, epistemologies of resistance, community formation and social movements.
B.A., Ethnic Studies, Humboldt State University, 2008.
M.A., Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University, 2010
M.A. Thesis: "The San Francisco Food Security Discourse: Race, Class, and Gentrification"
Jinni Pradhan
Research Interests: media audiences/cultures, fandom studies, transnational media, new media, globalization, identity construction in relation to media, Asian popular culture, celebrity culture.
B.A., Japanese Studies, University of San Francisco, 2007
M.A., Communication, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2010
M.A. Thesis: "It's My Passion, That's My Mission To Decide, I'm Going Worldwide: the Cosmopolitanism of Global Fans of Japanese Popular Culture"
Cultural Studies Third-Year Students
Kelley Gove
Research Interests: Cultures of nature, landscapes and power, environmental consumerism, tourism, food, visual culture, science studies
M.A. American Studies and Environment and Natural Resources, University of Wyoming.
Thesis: "Nature as Other: Debating Wyoming's Red Desert"
MLIS Simmons College.
B.A. English and psychology, University of New Hampshire.
Julia Alejandra Morales Fontanilla
jmoralesfontanilla@ucdavis.edu
Research Interests: Gender subjectivities within peace and reconciliation processes, masculinities, queer and gender studies, rhetoric
B.A. Languages and Sociocultural Studies, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, 2006.
B.A. Thesis: "Infinite Expiation: Discourse Analysis of the Justice and Peace Law, Law 975/2005, Confronted with Derrida's Notion of Forgiveness"
Cultural Studies Fourth-Year Students:
Advanced to Candidacy:
Megan Bayles
Dissertation: Gross Anatomy: Knowledge, Wonder and Bodies on Display.
Research Interests: Body theory, history of medicine and medical culture, museum studies, narrative, disability studies, performance studies, race, postcolonial studies, visual culture, curiosities
B.A. Intersectionality in Literature and Social Movement in the U.S., Macalester College, 2005
Thesis: "A 'patchwork quilt of reality': Individuality, Collectivity, & the Narrative Community in Toni Morrison's Novels"
Hilary Berwick
Dissertation: Emotion in America: Creating the Fearing Subject.
Research Interests: the implications of the relationships between music, community, information and media.
B.A. English Language and Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A. NYU in the John W. Draper School for Humanities and Social Thought. The title of my MA thesis was "I Listen to Records: Historical Objects Within an
Analysis of New Media."
Tallie Ben Daniel
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Love Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism and Queer Politics in Israel/Palestine.
Research Interests: Middle-Eastern Studies; Feminist and Gender Studies; Queer Theory; citizenship production; the discourses of rights-based politics; gendered nationalism; postcolonial literature; continental philosophy.
B.A. Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2005.
Sara Bernstein
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: From Little Black Dress to Little Blue Vest: Fashion, Film and the Shifting Position of the American Shopgirl.
Research Interests: Film Theory, Fashion Theory, Visual Culture, Theories of the Novel and Narrative, Representations of Production/Consumption, Subject Formations/Subjectivity, Low Wage White-Collar Labor.
M.A. Visual Culture, Dept. of Art and Art Professions, New York University, 2005.
B.A. English Literature, Portland State University, 1997.
Abigail Boggs
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Prospective Student, Potential Threat: The Figure of the International Student in US Higher Education.
Research Interests: Critical, Queer and Postcolonial Theory, Transnational Feminist Studies, Twentieth Century Intellectual and Political U.S. History, Neoliberalism and Privatization, Higher Education.
B.A. Women's Studies, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 2002.
B.A. Thesis: "Pornography and Its Discontents: Feminism, Sexuality and the University."
D. A. Caeton
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Reading Between the Dots: The Somanormative Silhouette of Braille in U.S. Culture, 1830-1938.
Research Interests: Critical Disability Studies, Histories of Blindness, Technoculture, Theories of Hybridity, and Continental Philosophy.
M.A. English Composition Theory and Rhetoric, California State University, Fresno, 2006.
M.A. Thesis: "Ones, Zeros, and Everything in Between."
B.A. Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, 2002.
B.A. Honors Thesis: "Re/Constructing Frederick Douglass."
Elise Chatelain
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Technologies of Domesticity: Class, Domestic Labor, and the Home as a Disciplinary Institution.
Research Interests: Feminist Theory, Motherhood and Domesticity, The Family and Children, Consumer Culture, Public Health Narratives in Popular Culture, Television and Radio, Popular Music, Southern U.S. Identity and Culture, 20th Century U.S. Cultural History.
M.A. Sociology, University of New Orleans, 2005.
M.A. Thesis: "The Discursive Production of Subjectivity in Television News: Reflecting the Other on the Obese Child's Body."
B.A. Sociology, Whittier College, 2001.
B.A. Thesis: "Men's Health Magazine: Masculinity, Subjectivity, and the Reproduction of Power in Men's Magazines."
Andrea Dooley
Research Interests: politics of representation, personal narrative and the dialog between place and trauma, multivalent memorial space, place and reconciliation and the language of the unimaginable in the context of genocide.
M.A. Visual Criticism, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, 2006.
M.A. Thesis: "It Seems the Earth Could not Hold Them: Public Genocide Memorials in Rwanda."
B.S.S. Interdisciplinary Social Science: Urban Studies emphasis, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, 2003.
B.S.S. Thesis: "New Urbanism: Communitarianism and the Organizing Power of Space"
Tom Galaraga
M.A. Critical Studies, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, 2006.
B.A. Journalism: Print Emphasis, University of La Verne, 2002.
Sandy Gómez
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: "Princess House es mi Negocio": The Gendered and Racial Movement of Latina Bodies in Direct Sale Organizations.
Research Interests: Feminist Theory, the use of oral narratives to examine race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and cultural citizenship; the performance of class; theories of racialized consumption; the employment of Spanish-speaking women in direct marketing companies (Princess House, Inc); racialized gender and technology.
M.A. Social Science, University of Chicago, 2001.
M.A. Thesis: "Princess House on Display: Latinas and Direct Marketing."
B.A. Ethnic Studies, Music Literature Minor, University of California, San Diego, 1997.
Stacy Jameson
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Food Face: Eating on the Small Screen.
Research Interests:Sense and Affect of Film and Television, Food Media, Contemporary Cultural Criticism, Facial and Bodily Expression in Popular Culture, Television Studies (commercial advertising, food television, popular news discourse, and reality television), Cinema Theory and Criticism, Material Culture studies, Gender in Popular Culture.
B.A. American Studies, Women's Studies Minor, Colby College, Waterville, ME.
Tristan Josephson
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: on transits and transitions: (im)mobility, trans subjectivity, and the U.S. nation-state.
Research Interests: Queer and feminist theory; transgender studies and politics; travel and migration; race, sexuality, gender and citizenship; technologies of the state; media and film studies.
M.A. Women's Studies, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, 2004.
M.A. Thesis: "The Cultural Politics of ftm Transsexuality: Representations and Identities of Transsexual Men."
B.A. Comparative Sociology, Biology Minor, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, 2002.
Ingrid Lagos
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: The Migration of Biopolitics: Citizenship and Health in El Salvador.
Research Interests: formation of subjectivities, identities, and citizenships in transnational spaces; critical perspectives on nation, nation-state, and nationalism that intersect analyses on race/ethnicity, immigration, and globalization; colonialism and postcolonialism; contact zones; memory and nostalgia.
B.S. Applied Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles, 1992.
Dawn Lee
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: The Continuing Salience of Panethnicity: Asian American Youth, Cultural Performance, and Higher Education Multiculturalism.
Research Interests: Multiculturalism, diversity, and neoliberalism in higher education and social justice education; panethnicity in transnational and diasporic contexts; Asian American youth culture; cultural citizenship; cultural productions and the performance of panethnicity; critical theory in higher education.
M.A. American Studies, New York University, 2002
M.A. Thesis: "Asian American Hip Hop Cultural Production: Hybrid Subversions of the Model Minority Myth."
B.A. Political Science/Asian American Studies, University of California, Davis.
Sarah Rebolloso McCullough
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Mechanical Intuitions: Bicycles and the Development of Natural Abilities.
Research Interests: Embodiment, science & technology studies, feminist and critical theory, sports studies, fashion theory, material culture, mobilities.
M.A. American Studies, University of Wyoming, Laramie, 2007.
M.A. Thesis: "Construction of the Female Body in Action: A Study of Women's Sport Uniforms."
M.A. English, Marquette University, 2002.
B.A. English and Spanish, Marquette University, 2000.
Jamila Moore
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Digitally Mapping The Black Atlantic: Spatial Imagination and the Politics of Reappropriation between Africa and North America.
Research Interests: Critical Geography of the Black Atlantic; Modernity; Pan-Africanism; Digital Humanities Research and African American/African Diaspora Studies.
B.A. English and American Studies, Africa and the New World Minor, Tufts University, Medford, MA 2003.
B.A. Honors Thesis: "Speaking the Poem, the role of the Oral Poet in Transatlantic Conversation."
Amanda L. Morales
Ph.D. Candidate
B.S. Sociology and U.S. Latina/o Studies, Iowa State University, 2002.
Research Interests: Chicana/o Studies, Film, Popular Culture, and Representation.
Christina D. Owens
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Visible Desires: Working American Masculinities in Neoliberal Japan
Research Interests: U.S.-Japan relations, transnational America, multicultural Japan, expatriate communities, critical race theory, feminist theory, whiteness studies, political subjectivity, identity politics, human rights discourse, ethnography.
B.A. Psychology, Philosophy Minor, University of South Carolina, 1998.
Terry Park
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Demilitarizing Empire: The Korean DMZ
Research Interests: Asian American cultural production, Transnational American Studies, US empire, Cold War America, Korean War, North Korea, American frontier, continental philosophy, performance theory, critical ethnic studies, critical masculinity, biopolitics, neoliberalism, postcolonial theory, radical social movements, animal studies, critical video game studies, fashion studies.
M.A. Individualized Study, New York University, 2006.
M.A. Thesis: "38th Parallels" (performance) and "Blood Acts: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee, Michael Joo's Salt Transfer Cycle and Lee Kyung-hae's Protest Suicide."
B.A. International Studies, Vassar College, 2001.
Isabel Porras
Ph.D. Candidate
http://ucdavis.academia.edu/IsabelPorras
Dissertation: Hypersexual and Hemispheric: Performing Latinidad.
Research Interests: latinidad, sexualities, race in the Americas.
B.A. Latin American Studies, Smith College, 2006.
Minor: Portuguese and Brazilian Studies
Magali Rabasa
Dissertation: A Tianguis of Books, or Making Books Public: Collective-Presses and Intellectual-Political Networks in a 'Continent in Movement'
Research Interests: transamerican cultural studies, subaltern & postcolonial studies, radical political theory, transnational feminist theory, autonomy, grassroots politics, Mesoamerican and Andean literatures, popular music, film.
BA: University of Oregon, International Studies & Spanish, 2004.
B.A. Thesis: "New Social Movements- New Testimonio: Latin American Women & the Negotiation of Identity & Representation."
Fernando Socorro
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Post-1959 Cubans in the US: Remapping How We Got Here, Excavating Our Place.
B.A Degree: Social Science Interdisciplinary Studies, San Francisco State University, Spring, 1999.
Research Interests: Race History, Cuban History, Immigration, Identity Politics, Memory, Representation, Semiotics, Film, Media, Black American Identity, Video Documentary Production, Feminist/Gender Theory, Academic and Creative Writing.
Ami Sommariva
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Re-Imagined Communities: Televising Neighborhood, Nation, and the Nuclear Family in the 1970s.
Research Interests:Belonging and Community Formation, Authenticity, Authority and Expertise, Narrative and Historiography, 1970s Television and Popular Print Media, American Studies.
M.A. American Studies, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2005.
M.A. Thesis: "You Can't Throw It Away: Heirlooms, Identity, and Reification."
Winner of 2006 Outstanding Thesis Award, University of Kansas College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.
B.A. Communications, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 1997.
Jee-Eun R. Song
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Building an Empire Once Cup at a Time: Cultural Meaning and Power of Starbucks Korea.
Research Interests: Material Culture, Gender and Cultural Politics, Transnational Food Consumption, Political Economy of Coffee, Cafe Society, and Critical Race Theory.
B.A. English Literature, American Studies Minor, University of New Hampshire, 1999
B.A. Thesis: "Space and Place in Ng's Bone."
Winnie Tam Hung
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Chinatown Rim: Chinese Subjectivities and the Cultural Politics of an Ethnic Space.
Research Interests:Gentrification of ethnic space; neoliberal subjectification; youth racial and ethnic formation; urbanity.
B.A. Philosophy and Japanese Studies, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, 2002.
B.A. Thesis: "Empty Bamboo: Tales of a Second-Generation Chinese American."
Andrew Ventimiglia
Dissertation: Circulating Religion, Owning Belief: Intellectual Property in the American Spiritual Marketplace.
Research Interests: Circulation and Use of Media in New Age Communities, Transnational Contact in the Spiritual Tourism Industry, The Intersection of Science and Religion, Secularism, Post-Secularism, The History and Practice of Atheism
B.A. Cinema Studies, New York University, 2003
M.A. Cinema Studies and Certificate in Media and Culture, New York University, 2006
M.A. Thesis Documentary, "Dream Theater"
Michelle Yates
Ph.D. Candidate
Dissertation: Ecological Crisis: A Marxian Re-examination of the Environment.
Research Interests: green Marxism, green cultural studies, eco-feminism, film, critical theory, environmental justice.
B.A. Women's Studies, Pennsylvania State University, 2001.
Karl Zoller
Dissertation: Home & Away: Transnational U.S. Soccer Cultures.
Research Interests: American exceptionalism; sports and nationalism; espionage; detective fiction; food and travel writing; pop culture.
B.A. American Studies, UC Santa Cruz, 2004
M.A. Humanities, San Francisco State University, 2008
M.A. Thesis: "David Beckham and Cross-National Cultural Diffusion in the 21st Century"
Graduates
Toby Beauchamp, Ph.D., 2010
Dissertation: Going Stealth: Transgender Bodies and U.S. Surveillance Practices
Currently: UC Presidents Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Communication, UCSD
Brooke Butler, Ph.D., 2011
Dissertation: The Other Magic Kingdom: New Orleans Voodoo and Tourism
Santiago Castellanos, Ph.D., 2008
Dissertation: Hauntings by the Latin Lover: The Ambiguities of Eroticized Latino Male Bodies in Contemporary U.S. Queer Commercial Narrative Cinema
Denise Carvalho Bergstrom, Ph.D., 2005
Dissertation: Articulations and Interventionist Art: Negotiating the Production of Knowledge in Brazilian Culture
Currently: Assistant Professor of Art and Cultural Studies, Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, Maine; Art Critic and Independent Curator
Barbara Ceptus, Ph.D., 2011
Dissertation: (Re)membering Revolution, Imagining Blackness: The Haitian Revolution in the Black Cultural Imaginary
Marisol Cortez, Ph.D., 2009
Dissertation: The Ecology of Scatology: Excretory Encounters in American Cultural Life
Currently: Visiting Assistant Professor, American Studies, University of Kansas (ACLS New Faculty Fellow)
Benjamin D'Harlingue, Ph.D., 2011
Dissertation: Haunted Tourism: Sites of Violence in the United States.
Cathy Hannabach, Ph.D., 2010
Dissertation: Queer Tactilities: Corporeal Ethics in Visual Culture
Currently: Visiting Lecturer, Women's Studies, University of Pittsburgh
Laura Hudson, Ph.D., 2008
Dissertation: The Apocalyptic Animal of Late Capitalism
David Laderman, Ph.D., 2007
Dissertation: Slip-Sync: In/Authenticity and Performance in the Punk Musical Film Cycle, 1978-1986
Currently: Professor, Film, College of San Mateo
Karyl Ketchum, Ph.D., 2005
Dissertation: Technovisual Formalism: Representation in a Digital Age
Currently: Assistant Professor, Women's Studies, California Stare University--Fullerton
Valerie Kim-Thuy Larsen, Ph.D., 2007
Dissertation: Still the Heart of darkness? Performing Congo on the Western Stage
Kathy Littles, Ph.D., 2006
Dissertation: Locating the Hidden Voices in African Museum Exhibitions: How African Voices at the Smithsonian Institution Politicizes Race, Class, and Cultural Capital
Currently: Adjunct Assistant Professor, Bachelor of Arts Completion Program, California Institute of Integral Studies; Director of the Transformative Inquiry Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies
Leslie Madsen-Brooks, Ph.D., 2006
Dissertation: To Study, to Control, and to Love: Women Scientists in American Natural History Institutions, 1810-1950
Currently: Assistant Professor, History Department, Boise State University
David Michalski, Ph.D., 2010
Dissertation: Taste After Taste: On the Aesthetic Invitation of Wine
Currently: Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian, UC Davis
Liz Montegary, Ph.D., 2011
Dissertation: Queer Movements: Traveling Practices, Political Strategies, Neoliberal Desires.
Currently: Visiting Lecturer, Gender and Women's Studies, Yale University
David Nylund, Ph.D., 2004
Dissertation: Have a Take: Masculinity and Sports Talk Radio
Currently: Associate Professor, Division of Social Work, California State University--Sacramento
Linda Sanderson, Ph.D., 2006
Dissertation: A Ringside Seat to Paradise: Rodeo Cowgirls, the New Woman, and the Construction of a Usable Past
Scott Schonfeldt-Aultman, Ph.D., 2004
Dissertation: White Rhetorics: South African Expatriate Discourse in the United States.
Currently: Associate Professor, Communication, Saint Mary's College of California
Ms. Andrea L. Smith, Ph.D., 2011
Dissertation: Hyphy Intellect: The Formation of Bay Area Identities in the Realm of Commercial Hip Hop.