Women's and Gender Studies Department
Faculty Profiles & Contact Info

WGS Faculty

Adjunct Faculty

Affiliated Faculty

WGS Faculty

Charlene Tung, Department Chair & Professor

Office: Carson 32
Office hours: Friday 12 - 2 pm or by appt.
Phone: 707.664.2086
email: charlene.tung@sonoma.edu

Courses: Gender and Globalization; Contemporary Feminist Theory; Gender in Asian America; Gender, Race and Class; Gender, Sexuality and Family.

Dr. Tung's interests include gender and globalization, Asian American women's history/contemporary (im)migration, and gender and race-ethnicity in popular culture. Her publications include articles on Filipina migrant domestic workers employed as live-in eldercare workers in California. She has an M.A. (1996) and Ph.D (1999) from the University of California-Irvine.

Don Romesburg. Assistant Professor

Office: Carson 11
Office Hours: M 2 - 5 pm and W 9 - 10 am
Phone: 707.664.2574
email: romesbur@sonoma.edu

Courses: Gender, Race and Class; Feminist Theory; Intro to Queer Studies; Men and Masculinity; Contemporary Feminist Theory; Queer Lecture Series

Dr. Romesburg's interests include sexuality and gender in U.S. history,childhood and adolescence, transgender studies, race and sexuality, and queer performance and popular culture. Subjects that his scholarly pubications address include male youth sex work, the social science and cultures of adolescence and homosexuality, the social history of queer performers, and male intimacy in popular culture. Don has an M.A. in history (2000) from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Ph.D. in history (2006) with an interdisciplinary Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lena McQuade. Assistant Professor

Office: Carson 31
Office Hours: T 1 - 3 pm and W 1 - 2 pm
Phone: 664-2950
Email: mcquade@sonoma.edu

Courses: Women’s Bodies: Health and Image; Gender, Sexuality and Family; Women's History & Women's Activism; Feminist Research Methods; Contemporary Feminist Thought

Dr. McQuade’s research interests include reproductive politics, gender and race in U.S. public health, feminist interdisciplinary methodologies, U.S./Mexico border studies, and feminist, critical race, and queer theory. She has published on the history of parteras (midwives) in New Mexico, health along the U.S./Mexico border, and about the history of Jewish feminism and the bat mitzvah. She earned her B.A. from Sonoma State University majoring in Women’s and Gender Studies and Liberal Studies (Hutchins). Her M.A. (2003) and Ph.D. (2008) are both in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. During the 2007-2008 academic year, Lena was a dissertation fellow in the Feminist Studies Department at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

Adjunct Faculty

Mary Churchill

Office: Carson 51
Office Hours: M: 10:15-11:15 pm; F: 11:45-12:45 pm
Phone: 664-3169
Email: mary.churchill@sonoma.edu

Courses:Gender, Sexuality and Family

Mary Churchill, Ph.D., teaches in Women’s and Gender Studies, American Multicultural Studies, and Native American Studies at SSU.  She earned her Ph.D. in 1997 in religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in American Indian religious traditions and women and religion.  She has also been on the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Iowa.  Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion,and American Indian Quarterly as well as in Sacred Rights: The Case for Contraception and Abortion in World Religions and Reading Native American Women: Critical/Creative Representations.  In 2001 she was postdoctoral fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.  She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.  A former co-chair of the Women and Religion program unit of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), she now co-chairs the AAR Native Traditions in the Americas program unit.   

Cael Keegan

Office: Carson 51
Office Hours: T: 3:30-4 pm; 6:40-7 pm
Phone: 664-2840
Email: keeganca@sonoma.edu

Courses:Gender, Race and Class

Cael Keegan holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University at Buffalo. His dissertation, "Queer Melodramatics: The Feeling Body and the American Democratic Imagination," was a finalist for the 2010 Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize in American Studies. His scholarly interests include queer studies, transgender studies, popular culture, political theory, and affect studies. Keegan’s work has previously appeared in NeoAmericanist, The Journal of Lesbian Studies, and in Challenging Lesbian Norms. Currently, he is a contributor to the Trans Bodies, Trans Selves project.  His recent research examines the affective construction of the transgender body in American popular culture. He also teaches at San Francisco State University."

Affiliated Faculty

Teresa Alfaro-Velcamp

Associate Professor, History
Ph.D. History, Georgetown Univeristy. Interests include: Mexico, Borderlands, Transnationalism & Gender.
Courses: Gender and Sexuality in Latin America

Barbara Bloom

Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Ph.D. Sociology, UC-Riverside, 1996. Interest include: women/girls & criminal justice system; gender-responsive intervention & services.
Courses: Women and Crime

James Dean

Assistant Professor of Sociology
Ph.D. Sociology, SUNY-Albany. Interests include: sexuality, culture and social theory.
Courses: Sociology of Sexualities

Myrna Goodman

Associate Professor and Chair, Sociology. Director of Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide.
Ph.D. Sociology, UC-Davis. Interests include: Sociology of Genocide;
Courses: Sociology of Gender; Social Movements

Kim Hester-Williams

Associate Professor, English
Ph.D. UC San Diego
Courses: Women Writers, African American Literature

Patricia Kim-Rajal

Assistant Professor, Chicano Latino Studies
Ph.D. University of Michigan
Courses: Latina Feminisms

Elaine Leeder

Dean, School of Social Sciences.
Ph.D. Cornell University
Courses: Family Violence

Cindy Stearns

Professor of Sociology.
Ph.D. Sociology, UC Davis,1988. Interests include: sociology of reproduction, breastfeeding, gender and organizations.
Courses: Sociology of Reproduction