Faculty

Dr. Melisa Garcia is a poet and interdisciplinary scholar. Her research interests include: linguistic justice, the use of alternative discourses, and decolonial spaces that create the inclusion of BIPOC community discourses. She also researches the damaging rhetoric that shapes the Central American diaspora in the U.S. through the use of autoethnography, constellation identities, and decolonial imaginaries. Through her research, teaching, and community work, Dr. Garcia aims to bring stories...

Jorge A. Aquino, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, specializing in Latin American and U.S. Latinx Christian theologies and religious history, liberation theologies, race and religion, sexuality, and the theo-politics of social movements. He is involved in research, conference work, and publishing activities throughout the Américas (see his academia.edu profile).

Dr. Aquino is a principal researcher in the Theology, Ethics, and Politics Working...

Christina Garcia Lopez holds a PhD in American Studies with a portfolio in Mexican American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. She completed her BA in English Literature at the University of North Texas and an MA in American Literature and Culture at the University of Leeds. Previous to joining USF, she held a lectureship at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her teaching and research interests include: Latinx and Chicanx literature; Ethnic...

Roberto Gutiérrez Varea began his career in theater in his native Argentina. His research and creative work focuses on live performance as means of resistance and peacebuilding in the context of social conflict and state violence. Varea's stage work in the United States includes directing premieres of works by Migdalia Cruz, Ariel Dorfman, Cherríe Moraga, and José Rivera, among others. He is the founding artistic director of Soapstone Theatre Company, a collective of male ex-offenders and women...

Associate Professor, received her Masters in Comparative Literature at San Francisco State University and her PhD from the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at Stanford University. Her areas of focus include Mexican, Border and Chicana/o Literary and Cultural Studies, with an interest in Feminist and Performance Studies.

Nicole Gonzales Howell received her MA from California State University, Fresno and earned her PhD from Syracuse University in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric. In 2014 Nicole was selected as one of the Ethnic Minority Dissertation Fellows at the University of San Francisco (now the Gerardo Marin Dissertation Fellows). Currently, Nicole is a full-time associate professor in the Rhetoric and Language department and teaches several Written Communication and Public Speaking courses. Additionally...

Professor Pedro Lange Churión is both an academic and a visual artist. He has written and directed various films, including Crocodile (USA, 2000). Based on a short story by Felisberto Hernández. This film received a Remmy Bronze award for best dramatic adaptation at the Houston International Film Festival (2001). He also wrote and directed Visitas (Colombia, 2005), a full-feature narrative film that explores violence in Colombia. This film has garnered recognition as "Official Selection" in...

Dr. Omar F. Miranda is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature. He received his PhD in English and American Literature from New York University and specializes in the literatures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially their transnational, global, and diasporic contexts. He is currently working on a book manuscript that tracks the origins and rise of the culture of global celebrity in the Romantic period. He is also part of an editorial team assembling the new Ro...

Julio Moreno is a professor of history and affiliated engineering faculty at the University of San Francisco. Born in the Salvadoran countryside, Professor Moreno fled his country's civil war at the age of fourteen and navigated the US educational system as an undocumented immigrant. He is the recipient of distinguished awards that include research fellowships on the globalization of U.S. business, technology, and diplomacy at the Library of Congress and the Institute for Historical Studies at...

Prof. Olmedo general area of expertise is Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies. Her research interests focus on Gothic Literature, Women and Gender Studies, and Emergent Horror Cinemas. She teaches courses in language and culture and also literature and film, such as: Feminist Theory and Feminist Discourse, The Revenge of the Monsters and Conflicts and Confluences in the Spanish speaking world. She is the curator of the Latin Horror Film Festival at USF.