Faculty

Office Location: Sierra Hall 396
Email:
Phone: (818) 677-3110
Preferred Pronouns: she/her

Biography

• Phone: 818/677-4081
• Email: lisa.chaudhari@csun.edu

• Email: diane.dang@csun.edu
• Phone: 818/677-6762

• Email: robert.doyle@csun.edu
• Phone: 818/677-3101

Office Location: Jacaranda Hall 3533
Email: bobbie.emetu@csun.edu
Phone: (818) 677-3001

Biography

Dr. Bobbie Emetu is a faculty member in the Department of Health Sciences, affiliate faculty of Queer Studies, and the Coordinator of the Human Sexuality Minor. She has taught a plethora of courses in public health and sexual health. Dr. Emetu's research focus is in sexual transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV/AIDS risk behaviors. Her research interests include condom use errors, innovative methods for STI testing, HIV-related stigma, and the association between sexual abuse and sexual risk behaviors. She continues to conduct applied research within the areas of health education, disease prevention, and sexual health.

• Email: omar.gonzalez.93@csun.edu
• Phone: 818/677-2054

Office Location: Sierra Tower 820
Email: leilani.hall@csun.edu
Phone: (818) 677-3428
Preferred Pronouns: she/her/hers

Biography

Leilani R. Hall is the author of the poetry collection Swimming the Witch.  Her work has appeared in the literary journals North American Review, The Laurel Review, Water-Stone, The Ohio Review and elsewhere, including the anthologies The Norton Mix and In a Fine Frenzy: Contemporary Poets Respond to Shakespeare.  She is a professor of poetry, poetics, and disability studies in addition to her work in queer studies. 

• Ph.D. Vanderbilt University
• Email: sid.hansen@csun.edu
  
• Phone: 818.677.4853
• Interests: Feminist Theory, Bioethics, Continental Philosophy
• Website: https://philpeople.org/profiles/sid-hansen

Office Location: Sierra Tower 833
Email: amanda.harrison@csun.edu
Phone: (818) 677-5197
Preferred Pronouns: she/her/hers

Biography

Amanda received her BA and MA in English Literature from California State University, Northridge while simultaneously working as a marketing and touring executive in the music business. She currently teaches at CSUN in the English Department and Queer Studies Program. She has previously taught in the Music Industry Administration Program and Intensive English Program.

Office: ED 2233
Email: greg.knotts@csun.edu
Phone: 818/677-3189
Preferred Pronouns: he/him/his

Biography

Greg Knotts is a Professor and Chair of the Elementary Education Department at California State University, Northridge.  He has served as the Director of the Queer Studies Program and Associate Director of Faculty Development, and continues to serve as Coordinator of the Integrated Teacher Education Program (ITEP) in Liberal Studies.  Greg’s primary research interests focus on issues of gender and sexual orientation and how they impact the elementary school.  He also researches multicultural education, social studies education, as well as how best to integrate gender and sexuality into the social studies curriculum. Greg earned his PhD in International/Intercultural Education from the University of Southern California.

Email:
Phone: 818/677-6762
Pronouns: he/him/his
Editor: Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions

Office Location: Jerome Richfield 340C
Email: sheena.malhotra@csun.edu 
Phone: (818) 677-7217
Preferred Pronouns: she/her/hers

Biography

Sheena Malhotra is Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Director of the Queer Studies Program at California State University, Northridge.

She received her Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico (1999) in Communication Studies with an emphasis on gender, media, and intercultural communication. Her academic research and articles focus on the intersections of gender, sexuality, media, technology and global culture, with a postcolonial analysis of media in India and the diaspora. Her research interests range from Hindi films and call centers in India to racialized implications of silences and bridgework. She has two books. One is a co-authored book (with Aimee Carrillo Rowe and Kimberlee Perez) on call centers in India entitled, Answer the Call: Virtual Migration in Indian Call Centers(2013) by University of Minnesota Press. Her second book is co-edited with Aimee Carrillo Rowe, entitled, Silence, Feminism, Power: Reflections at the Edges of Sound (2013)with Palgrave Macmillan.

Dr. Malhotra has experience in the Indian film and television industries. Prior to earning her Ph.D. degree, she worked as an Executive Producer and Commissioning Editor of Programs at a progressive television network in India. She has also worked in the Indian film industry as an Assistant Director to Shekhar Kapur (director of Bandit Queen and Elizabeth). Dr. Malhotra began teaching in the Gender and Women's Studies department at CSUN in Fall, 2000. She teaches courses on women and popular culture as well as general WS classes. 

Dr. Malhotra served as the very first Coordinator and Advisor for the Queer Studies Program from 2008-12. She is presently directing the program again, since 2019. Her class, Sex, Lies and Media is one of the electives for the QS minor.

Office Location: Santa Susana 418
Email: joe.martinez@csun.edu
Preferred Pronouns: He/They

Joey Earvin Martinez (He/Him; They/Them) joins the Queer Studies Program at CSUN as a Part-time Lecturer. They earned their Master of Arts in Communication Studies (emphasis in Performance, Language, and Cultural Studies) at CSUN. They center coalition building, liberatory, and critical performance methodologies as a Queer Artist of Color in Recovery, Scholar, and Community Organizer. In the past, Joey has taught COMS 199 Performance Ensemble, COMS 151, QS 151 Fundamentals of Public Speaking, and QS 201 Race and Ethnicity in Queer Studies. They orient themselves towards Queer Abolitionism, Transformative Justice, Queer of Color Critique, and Critical Performance Ethnography and Pedagogy. 

Their current research centers the intercultural and everyday performances in Queer Abolitionist Worlds. They are a multi-media artist and performer who thinks through intimate and expansive relationship building. Joey uses critical performance methodologies to challenge and resist old worlds while imagining and building up Queer Abolitionist ones. Their work serves to remind us about the everydayness/everynightness of subjects of history and their deeply personal relationships to institutions like the Prison Industrial Complex and the Medical Industrial Complex. Some of Joey’s work can be recognized by the refrain “A Queer Jail-Time,” which stories and elevates histories of QTBIPoC and is a critical performance ethnography that serves to archive the interpersonal and inter-political lives of his community. In particular, Joey’s research is in conversation with those who who were housed on the 9,000 Floor at Los Angeles Men’s Central Jail, “LGBTQ+” In-patient recovery homes, and “LGBTQ+” Sober livings all around Los Angeles, as well as Abolitionist laborers. 

They invest a lot of their time serving students and former students, community members, family members, and other community organizations. This includes Project Rebound @CSUN, any 12-Step Program, and Dignity and Power Now. When Joey is home, he’s in his room, listening to Tove Lo, and feeding his guinea pig, Apichu, which is Quechua for “Sweet Potato.” You may also find him trailing a mountain and building a spiritual relationship with the land through indigenous dreaming practices. 

Website:

• Office: SN 321
• Email: karen.morgaine@csun.edu
• Phone: 818/677-3591

https://academics.csun.edu/faculty/martin.pousson

• Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego
• Office: JR 144E
• Email: stevie.ruiz@csun.edu
• Phone: 818.677.7355
• Faculty Website

Email: maseri.schultz@csun.edu
Phone: 818/677-6762
Preferred Pronouns: she/they

Biography

• Office Location: Jerome Richfield 340
• Email:
• Phone: (818) 677-2486

Biography

• Office Location: Sierra Tower 425
• Email:  
• Phone: (818) 677-0916

Biography

Office Location: Sierra Tower 827
Email: rspitlerlawson@csun.edu
Phone: 818/677-3427
Preferred Pronouns: They/She

Biography

Rae Spitler-Lawson (she/they) received their BA in Communications/Creative Writing from Pepperdine University, and their MA in English from CSUN. Since 2011, they have taught a variety of courses in Composition & Literature in the English departments at CSUN and LAMC. More recently, they are proud to have joined the Queer Studies department at CSUN and have been teaching QS classes since 2021. Rae especially loves teaching in the Pop Culture Minor here at CSUN, and often looks for ways to incorporate cultural critique into her courses. Past courses have focused on the intersection of popular culture and politics, the sociopolitical & identity-based aspects of fandom studies and fan spaces, the use of mythology in comics and graphic novels, and Queer memoir as both a window into the queer experience & as a tool for social change. In their spare time, they can be found reading, cooking, and keeping up with various forms of pop culture media along with their wife, two cats, and a rather elderly dog.