Faculty

Marco Jacquemet teaches courses in communication and culture, intercultural communication, geographies of communication, and justice and social change. His scholarship focuses on the communicative mutations produced by the circulation of migrants and media idioms in the Mediterranean area. His more recent book project is called Transidioma: Language and Power in the 21st Century. He is also present in Italian media activist networks, where he investigates the link between media and power.

Evelyn Y. Ho is a professor of communication studies, Asian Pacific American studies, and critical diversity studies. 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 meanings of acupuncture and Chinese medicine in underserved communities. She has led...

Oren Kroll-Zeldin is the assistant Director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco where he is also an assistant professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. He is the co-editor of This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity (Penn State University Press) and author of the forthcoming book Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine (New York University Press). Oren is the co-founder...

Vijaya Nagarajan is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and in the Program of Environmental Studies. In addition to teaching at the University of San Francisco, she has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University.

Vijaya's academic interests weave among the fields of Hinduism, Environment, Gender, Ritual, and the Commons. She received her PhD in South Asian Language and Literatures from UC Berkeley. Vijaya has received...

Rabia Kamal received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of expertise include cultural and visual anthropology, religious and racial politics in the U.S., and the use of social media and new technologies for identity formation and political engagement. Her dissertation focuses on the cultural politics of belonging and identity among Asian American and African American Muslim artists and activists in post-9/11 America. She has also worked and lived in...

Aleksandra Simonova is a Russian-born and US-based anthropologist and filmmaker. She is a PhD candidate in socio-cultural anthropology at UC Berkeley. In her work, she combines an interest in writing and theoretic exploration with visual and sensorial experience. She has a background in political studies and sociology with BA from Moscow State University and MA from European University at St. Petersburg. In her research, she studied ongoing social and political transformations wrought by the...

Before becoming an anthropologist, George Gmelch played professional baseball in the Detroit Tigers organization. He is the author of fourteen books including a memoir about his baseball life, Playing with Tigers: A Minor-League Chronicle of the Sixties, which was a finalist for the Casey Award for the best baseball book of 2016. Over his fifty-year teaching career he regularly ran anthropology field programs in the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. He is now retired and living on in the Napa Valley.

Sharon Bohn Gmelch earned a PhD in cultural anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her interests include visual anthropology, gender, ethnicity, and tourism. She is the author of ten books, including Nan: The Life of an Irish Travelling Woman (1986/91), which was a finalist for anthropology's Margaret Mead award, and The Tlingit Encounter with Photography (2008). She also co-produced an ethnographic film on the Tlingit. She has conducted research in Ireland, Barbados...

John Nelson is Professor of East Asian religions in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Francisco. He is the author of Experimental Buddhism: Innovation and Activism in Contemporary Japan (2013, University of Hawaii; co-winner of the 2014 Numata Prize for 'outstanding book in Buddhist Studies'), two books on Shinto in contemporary Japan (A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine [1996], and Enduring Identities: the Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan [2000]...