Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Department Chair
Biography
African American Studies Faculty
Biography
Biography
Dr. Charles Gentry is a versatile interdisciplinary scholar who works as a Lecturer in the African American Studies Program at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and a researcher with the UTSA Center for Cultural Sustainability. He also teaches in the UTSA Department of History and the Johns Hopkins University Cultural Heritage Management Program. He received a doctoral degree from the University of Michigan in American Culture and a B.A. from UTSA in American Studies. Dr. Gentry's interests include African American history, film and media studies, performance studies, arts management, and cultural policy. His current research includes an examination of the history of segregation in San Antonio, its impact on African American communities on the city’s Eastside, and the potential outcomes of recent urban development policies and planning initiatives that focus on equity and inclusion. A San Antonio native, Dr. Gentry has taught high school and college-level arts, culture, and computer application courses, and was a curator and theater manager at the Flint Institute of Arts in Michigan. He is a Certified Tourism Ambassador, World Heritage Ambassador, high school lacrosse coach, and community volunteer.
Biography
Biography
Traci Easley Williams is a Lecturer in African American Studies and possesses more than 18 years of progressive experience in higher education within the disciplines of film/television production, scriptwriting, visual media, and Pan-African studies. Mrs. Williams has served as the Director of the Center of Pan-African Culture at Kent State University (KSU) and advisor to several student organizations. Currently, she teaches courses at KSU, the University of Texas-San Antonio, and the University of Oklahoma. Mrs. Williams has developed a curriculum for multiple courses focusing on the imagery of people of color, feature film production, and women in digital media. She has also written two textbooks to accompany her courses. Traci also has over 25 years of working professionally in the television and film industry. Mrs. Williams started as a host of a teenage talk show on the Fox network while in high school. She went on to work on multiple feature films, music videos, documentaries, and TV shows. Traci has film and television experience as a writer, casting associate, and producer.
Mexican American Studies Faculty
Biography
Sonya M. Alemán is an associate professor in the Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department and Mexican American Studies Program at the University of Texas, San Antonio. She received her BA from St. Mary’s University, an MA from the University of Texas, Austin, and a Ph.D. from the University of Utah. She studies mainstream media representations of communities of color, alternative media content produced by communities of color, and manifestations of race, racism, and whiteness in the media. In addition, she is invested in improving the educational experiences of students of color. She draws on critical race theory and Chicana feminism to inform both her scholarship and pedagogy. She is published in Critical Studies in Media Communication; Equity and Excellence in Education; Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies; and International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. She is the Editor of Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social.
Sonya Alemán, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Email | CV
Biography
Marco Cervantes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Mexican American Studies Program at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He researches sonic convergences in shared spaces through the use of critical race theory, diaspora studies, decolonial studies, and hip-hop studies with a focus on Black and Brown solidarity and cultural overlap. He has published in the American Quarterly, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, Association of Mexican American Educators, and Liminalities: Journal of Performance Studies. Along with his work as a scholar, he performs as hip-hop artist Mexican Step Grandfather and is also a member of the group Third Root.
Marco Cervantes, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Email | CV
Biography
A native of Seguin, Texas, Dr. Rachel Yvonne Cruz’s love for music began at a very early age--inspired by her mother, Mary, who availed a variety of musical styles and genres. According to her mother, Rachel was singing before she could speak.
Cruz earned the degree Bachelor of Arts/Music from the University of Notre Dame (ND) in Indiana, under the direction of Georgine Resick, Soprano, and the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (UT), under the tutelage of Gilda Cruz- Romo, Soprano and the late Martha Deatherage, Soprano and Professor of Voice. Cruz has been a finalist at the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Competition and was the winner of the 1996 Roy Crane Award for Creativity in the Arts at UT. Cruz holds teaching certificates in Secondary Music and English as a Second Language. Her teaching career began at Fulmore Middle School in Austin, where she founded Austin Independent School Districts' first middle school mariachi ensemble and taught at Laredo’s Vidal M. Treviño School of Communication and Art.
Biography
Biography
Lilliana Patricia Saldaña, Ph.D. is from Yanawana, occupied territory known as San Antonio, Texas, and is an Associate Professor of MAS at UTSA where she also serves as program coordinator for the program. Saldaña’s research draws from Chicana/x/o Studies methodologies, Chicana feminist thought, and decolonial studies to examine teacher identity and consciousness, epistemic struggles in education, and colonial/decolonial schooling practices. She’s published in nationally recognized journals, including Latinos & Education, Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society, and Association of Mexican American Educators Journal. She is co-editor of Latinas and the Politics of Urban Space (2020) with Sharon Navarro and Entre el Sur y el Norte: Decolonizing education through critical readings of Chicana/x/o music (forthcoming) with Marco Cervantes, and is working on an edited volume with Christopher Carmona that documents the historic struggle for MAS in K-12 schools in Texas. As a public intellectual and local scholar, Saldaña works closely with various organizations including the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center and the Mexican American Civil Rights Institute. She is also actively involved in statewide mobilizing efforts to implement MAS in K-12 schools and is co-director of the MAS Teachers' Academy, a community-powered summer institute that supports teachers in MAS pedagogy and curriculum development.
REGSS Fellowships
Biography
Carolina Arango-Vargas holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and a Certificate in Advanced Studies in Women's and Gender Studies from Syracuse University (2018). She has conducted ethnographic research with professional feminist NGOs and grassroots women's organizations of the Colombian women's movement. In particular, she focuses on the organizational and personal trajectories of popular-sector rural and urban women –popular women- who use feminism as a political tool to resist multiple forms of violence and discrimination. More broadly, Carolina's research interests include the development of women's political agency and political consciousness, the significance of feminismo popular in Latin America, and the impact of political violence on women's subjectivity, memory, and healing, particularly in her native Colombia. Carolina uses ethnographic methodologies and draws upon transnational and decolonial feminist theories, working at the intersection of political and feminist anthropology.
Biography
José G. Villagrán was born and raised on the migrant farmworker circuits between Northern California, South Texas, and Wisconsin and claim the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas as home. He completed his undergraduate degree in 2007 at Michigan State University in Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Science with minors in anthropology and Chicano/Latino Studies. Then attained an M.A. in Mexican American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012 and a Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the same university in 2019. He studies migrant and seasonal farmworkers of the “Midwest stream” between South Texas and the U.S. Midwest for his doctoral dissertation and continues to study migratory Latinx labor in the U.S. Overall, he is interested in migration, labor, race, gender, social movements, anthropological theory, borderlands studies, and U.S.-Mexico relations. Given his background and research interests, he is thrilled to be in San Antonio working on the Democratizing Racial Justice project.
Biography
Aneesa Anderson is a Teaching Fellow in African American Studies. Her research and advocacy interests reside under the multicultural umbrella with an emphasis on Race-Based Trauma, LGBTQIA issues, and intersectionality of identities. Ms. Anderson is a member of the counseling honor society, Chi Sigma Iota, and a part of the illustrious Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Community advocacy drives her personal and professional goals. Counselor Education and Supervision doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She received her M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Lipscomb University in Nashville. Ms. Anderson has experience providing counseling services in integrative healthcare, nonprofit crisis services, and group practice. She hopes to obtain her counseling license and become a tenure track professor post-graduation.
Biography
Madelyn Duffey is a doctoral student in the Counselor Education and Supervision program at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Madelyn received a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities with concentrations in English and History from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a Master of Arts in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi, and a Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has served on the American Counseling Association (ACA) Professional Advocacy Task Force and the ACA Awards Committee and was the Awards Co-Chair for the Sigma Alpha Chi Chapter of Chi Sigma Iota. This year, Madelyn serves on the ACA Graduate Student Committee and as Treasurer for the Sigma Alpha Chi Chapter of Chi Sigma Iota. A Mellon Democratizing Racial Justice Fellow through the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UTSA, Madelyn teaches Introduction to Women's Studies to undergraduate students. Madelyn's research interests include intersectional identity development, multicultural counselor education, historical trauma and trauma sites, feminist career counseling, and the mental health impact of political polarization.
Biography
Olga Estrada (They/She) is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Culture, Literacy, and Language program at UTSA. She is currently a Democratizing Social Justice fellow through the Andrew W. Mellon grant. As part of the department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality, she teaches introductory courses in women, gender, and sexuality studies. As an Anzaldúan theorist, her research interest is centered on decolonial Chicana feminist theory and epistemology. Her current research involves critical autoethnography to explore the experience of being a Queer Chicana/x in higher education. She has served as a summer graduate research assistant for the Mexican American Studies Teachers’ Academy for three consecutive years. She has also currently an active board member for the Association for Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship(AJAAS) and serves on the committee as a scholarship liaison.
Biography
Lourdes “Alex” Gutierrez (she/her/ella) was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, yet calls San Antonio home since 2002. Since relocating to San Antonio, she completed an associate’s degree at Palo Alto Community college in 2013, and a Bachelor’s of English with a concertation in creative writing in December 2018 from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). As an undergrad, Lourdes was accepted into the McNair Scholars Program with whom she was able to focus on her research interest in topics related to critical race theory. During her time with McNair, she presented research based on anti-Semitism in William Faulkner’s novel, The Sound and the Fury (1929), and research surrounding Mexican American representation in the film Giant (1956). Currently she is an English Master’s student at UTSA on her final year prior to graduation in the Fall of 2022. Her master’s thesis focuses on critical race theory and Chicano Shakespeare with an emphasis on adaptations of the Bard’s works that center around social justice for Chicanx students. She is also a Graduate TA II for the department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (REGSS), teaching Mexican American Studies (MAS) Latina/o Cultural Expressions. In addition, she serves as the current Interim Managing Editor for Sagebrush Review, a student led publication for UTSA. Future plans include completing an English Ph.D. with a focus on MAS and critical race theory.
College of Education and Human Development
Main Building | One UTSA Circle | San Antonio, TX 78249
Phone: 210-458-4370 | education@utsa.edu