Lecturers
Lecturer
Email: jennifer.berry@csun.edu
Phone: (818) 677-7218
Office location: JR 340L
Jennifer's Biography
Jennifer Berry earned her BA from USC and her MFA from San Francicso State University.
Jennifer Berry has been a proud member of the GWS faculty since 2005. Her teaching, writing and activism dives into the themes of women & family.
She is fiercely dedicated to writing and teaching about social and political issues. She has organized several performances on campus to stand up against Violence Against Women.
As a writer, she has been featured in Ms. Magazine, Howl Round, and several other feminist publications and is an internationally produced playwright.
Lecturer
Email: shira.brown@csun.edu
Phone: 818-677-2780
Office location: JR 340
Shira's Biography
Shira Brown graduated from Californian State University, Northridge, with a BA degree in Women’s Studies and English in 2002. Prof. Brown also holds an MA degree in Applied Women’s Studies, with a concentration in Community Building & Education, from Claremont Graduate University, earned in 2004.
While at CSUN, Shira held the position of Director of the Women’s Resource Center on campus, as well as Director of the Women and Youth Supporting Each other (WYSE) CSUN chapter.
Immediately after earning her MA, Shira began working at the Institute for Multicultural Counseling & Education Services, Inc. (IMCES), where she became a Certified Domestic Violence Advocate and Program Coordinator for a CalWorks Domestic Violence program. It was here that she worked one-on-one with survivors of domestic violence providing access to community resources.
In addition to working as Program Coordinator and Case Manager at IMCES, Shira was successful in writing and was awarded two Requests for Proposals from the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, including a contract for the Family Preservation Program and the Wraparound Approach Services program – providing more than $4 million of funding. In Fall 2012, Shira was awarded a Campus Action Project grant from the American Association of University Women, where she was able to explore the gender wage gap with CSUN students.
Since August 2011, Shira has served as the Staff Director for CSUN's Women's Research and Resource Center. She has been teaching in the CSUN Gender and Women’s Studies department since Spring 2006.
Lecturer
Email: marie.cartier@csun.edu
Phone: 818-677-5024
Office location: SH 396
Marie's Biography
Dr. Marie Cartier is a scholar, visual /performance artist, queer activist, poet and theologian who has been active in many movements for social change.
She teaches at Univ. Calif. Irvine in Film and Media Studies , and at California State University Northridge in Gender and Women’s Studies. Her Ph.D. is in Religion from Claremont Graduate University (2010), in Women Studies and Religion, with an emphasis on theology, ethics and culture. Her book, Baby You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars and Theology before Stonewall was published by Acumen Press in 2013.
She also has three Master of Fine Arts Degrees – Film Studies, and Theater, from UCLA and Visual Art from Claremont. Her thesis project from Claremont, an installation performance project MORGASM, the Museum of Radical Gender and Sex Matrix, explores female orgasm in a museum context, and is currently available on the web.
She is a widely published poet, whose works have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She has also published several plays and also poetry, among these is I'm Your Daughter, Not Your Lover.
She currently teaches in Gender and Women's Studies, as well as in Queer Studies.
Dr. Cartier's Photograph is by Lenn Keller
The book jacket photo for "Baby You Are My Religion" is from the Carolyn Weathers Collection/ ONE Archives
Lecturer
Jeanna's Biography
Dr. Jacobsen holds an MSW and PhD in Social Work and a MS in Instructional Design and Technology. For over 21+ years, they have practiced clinical social work with an emphasis on crisis intervention and trauma-informed care. They have taught at various universities since 2009. Dr. Jacobsen's scholarship has focused on intersecting identities, specifically related to sexuality, gender, and spirituality. As a feminist qualitative research methodologist, they support students whose research utilize critical theories. Recent research and publications/presentations have focused on teaching diversity and difference in the social work classroom and instructional design in social work classrooms.
Lecturer
Rossana's Biography
Rossana Pérez was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the U.S. in 1983, after being released from prison where she was held as a political prisoner. Since her arrival, she has been at the heart of the Central American Solidarity and Sanctuary movements in Los Angeles. She is a co-founder of El Rescate and Clínica Monseñor Romero, two organizations that have helped Central American refugees and others for over 35 years. Pérez is a founding member of the first-ever Central American Studies Program in the nation, at Cal State University Northridge, established in 1999. After twenty years of community work, she returned to school to finish her education, which had been interrupted by the Salvadoran civil war. She holds a B.A. in English Lit. and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies, English and Spanish Lit. And an MFA, on Creative Writing, Non-fiction and Poetry, Currently, works in the department of Gender and Women Studies at Cal State University Northridge. Pérez is the editor of Flight to Freedom: The Story of Central American Refugees in California, (Arte Público Press 2007), which profiles eight Salvadoran community organizers whom pioneered the foundation of the community organizations that still provide services to the Central American and Latinx community at large. Her epistolary piece “Back and Forward” is part of The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States (Tia Chucha Press, 2017). Meridiano a short collection of poems in Spanish, published by LibroMovil Publications 2023, with support of CSUF Scott Jewet Summer Community Engagement Grant and the Institute of Black Intellectual Innovation.
Lecturer
Emily's Biography
Emily Perez earned her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Princeton University and her doctorate in Cinema and Media Studies with a double minor in Visual Studies and Gender Studies from USC. She has taught she has taught Cinema and Women’s Studies courses in both Northern and Southern California throughout the past decade. Her primary areas of research include Queer Theory, Critical Eating Studies, and French New Extremist Cinema. She currently teaches in the department of Cinema and Media Studies at USC as well as CSUN.
Lecturer
Rachel's Background
Education
M.A., Gender Studies (UCLA, 2022); M.A., African Studies (UCLA, 2010); B.A., International Relations (University of Redlands, 2004).