February 2026 Newsletter

We will be hosting an all-college mid-semester check in on  Friday, March 6, 2026, from 12 to 1:00pm in EP 116.  The meeting will be in person and on Zoom.  We will be serving a light lunch for those that can attend.  We will be using this time to check in with faculty.  Please RSVP here.

The College of Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Research Symposium celebrates our undergraduates' remarkable contributions to research and other creative work on various topics. This event will include poster presentations from our capstone courses. It will also feature research presentations from our 2025-2026 FURI students.

Join us, May 6th 11am - 4pm in Library 121 to see our students works and hear their research presentations. 

Congratulations to these faculty members for being recipients of these awards:

2026-2027 Sabbatical Awards 

Professor Rama Kased (RRS)
Professor Isabelle Pelaud (AAS)
Professor Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales (AAS)

2026-2027 Difference-In-Leave Award

Professor Valerie Soe (AAS)
Professor Bárbara Abadía-Rexach (LTNS)

Congratulations to Dean Grace Yoo, who received a Fullbright International Administrator Award to Taiwan.

Departmental and Faculty Updates

Prof. Edwards and Prof. Pitre co-edited the book New Perspectives in Africana Studies. It is is in production, including Africana Studies faculty members as contributors. New Perspectives in Africana Studies is a collection of essays that explores contemporary issues facing people of African descent. Rooted in the legacy of the first Black Studies department established in 1968 at San Francisco State University, this work brings together leading voices to critically engage with urgent topics relevant to the African diaspora today. The essays examine the evolution of Africana Studies as a discipline, emphasizing its community-centered and liberatory mission, while addressing themes such as gender, technology, and cultural identity.

Professor Mark Davis recently collaborated with the School of Design to create posters for the SFSU 1968 Student Strike for his Communicating Realness: Minding the Gap Class. He continues his research on the 1968 SFSU Student Strike and the Black Arts Movement.

Above: Professor Mark Allan Davis and Professor Tiffany Caesar with Africana Studies COES hood recipient Jazz Hudson at the COES SFSU 1968 Strike Lunch last semester.

Professor Dorothy Tsuruta served as the MLA Chair for the African American Committee at the National Convention. She continues to support the Bay Area community by participating in a toy drive in the Bayview Hunters-Point Community.

Professor Reason is working on a mapping project concerning the life of a profound transgender revolutionary from California, and they are currently hosting a Visiting Scholar from Brazil, while finishing their documentary.

Professor Donela Wright is working on her groundbreaking book based on her research. 

Professor Akom is currently a Brookings Fellow, a senior nonresident fellow with the Center for Community Uplift. His research focuses on the intersection between AI, race, technology, data, design, and health innovation. 

Professor Terrilyn Woodfin recently rewrote the curriculum for AFRS 375 Law and The Black Community. She is continuing teaching wonderful classes like Black Creative Arts.

Professor Davey D continues to serve as a pillar in the Bay Area after being a featured speaker in NCORE. He is teaching his highly popular course Hip Hop Workshop this semester.

Professor Tiffany Caesar recently published her chapter, A Black Womanist Archival Tradition in The Routledge Handbook on the Lived Experience of Ideology Co-Edited by Dr. James Martel…She is finishing up her book, Archiving Africana Women's Stories: African Centered Education in South Africa and Detroit, and a co-edited volume Reparations in California: Understanding Historical and Present-Day Efforts Towards Actualizing Repair and Redress For Black People. She is working on a conference proceeding journal with the Jackson State University Researcher in collaboration with Grambling State University History department based on the Voices of Grambling Conference that the COES Ethnic Studies Oral History Team on the 1968 SFSU Student Strike attended…She also continues to work as a volunteer internship coordinator at the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper. 

Below:  Professor Terrilyn Woodfin and Davey D with Africana Studies AOC Madeline at the COES Welcome Back event in the Fall. 

Spring 2026 Upcoming Activities

The Africana Educational Studies Certificate is clearing final approvals.

Stay tuned for updates on The Nathan Hare Speaker Series.

The National Council for Black Studies has extended an invitation to Africana Studies to become an institutional member.

Black History Event: What Kind of Bird Can't Fly an Afternoon with Dorsey Nunn University Club on Wednesday, Feb 25th, 12:15-2:00 pm.

Chicken & Juice Feb. 26th, 2026, 12:00-2:30 EP 116

 

Professor Reason is organizing two events for Black History Month.

Making Black Queer Diaspora in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil is a Black History Month program organized by the City College of San Francisco African American Studies Department. Drawing on over a decade of research with Black queer and trans artists, Dr. Joshua K Reason (they/them) will trace a brief genealogy of arts, culture, and entertainment in Salvador. The event will take place on Thursday, February 19 from 11:00am - 12:40pm at the CCSF Ocean Campus.

Sylvester: Queen of Disco is a multimedia exhibition and tribute to honor the legacy of the Bay Area music legend. The main event will take place on Thursday, February 26 from 5-8pm PT at Dark Entries Records in Lower Nob Hill. The physical portion of the exhibition––curated by Dr. Joshua K Reason (SFSU) and Russell Ihrig (Computer History Museum)––is titled Sylvester Ephemera: 1971 - 1989 and is officially on view at Dark Entries. A brief article about the exhibition can be found here. 

This project is being funded by the Black, Indigenous, and Trans of Color Histories Lab, a trans histories project funded by the Mellon Higher Learning Initiative.

Departmental and Faculty Updates

American Indian Studies is hosting a Red Tawks Spring 2026 event on Tuesday March 10th from 12:30-1:45pm.  

Oneida historian Doug Kiel  about his forthcoming book.

Chickasaw scholar Jodi Byrd will be speaking on her new book in mid-April (Indigenomicon: American Indians, Video Games, and the Structures of Dispossession). 

The American Indian Studies Rights of Passage (graduation) is scheduled for Tuesday, May 19, 2026, 4:00-7:00 pm, LIB 121

Below: Professor Edwardo Madrill and Emeritus Professor Laureen Chew

Departmental and Faculty Updates

Professor Yuki Obayashi presented “Traveling Memories: Imperial Ruins and Nikkei Geographies” at PAMLA, contributing to national scholarly conversations on Nikkei history and spatial memory. Obayashi also presented research at the University of Chicago Hong Kong Center in connection with the 2025 book launch of Socializing Medicine: Health Humanities and East Asian Media, and has published book reviews in Nichibei Weekly.

Professor Jeannie Woo continues to lead the APIA Biography Project, now in its 13th year. This student-driven research and community engagement initiative partners with public libraries and cultural organizations across the Bay Area.

Professor Mai-Nhung and Professor Loan Le, through AA CARES, helped implement a CSU-wide mental health survey focused on Asian American students. To date, the survey has received over 2,000 responses, contributing valuable data to ongoing efforts to support student well-being.

Professor Cassie Miura has played a key role in revitalizing the Edison Uno Initiative for Nikkei and Uchinaanchu Studies and was a featured speaker at a well-attended public program at the San Francisco Public Library.

Professor Kira Donnell has been invited to host a talk at Seattle Asian Art Museum on February 14, as part of their Saturday University lecture series. See more about Professor Donnel’s lecture Representations of Transnational Adoptees in Contemporary Korean Dramas. 

Professor Russell Jeung published an Op-Ed in the LA Times, on mass deportations and their impact on AA communities. Read the full article here. 

An upcoming event:

The Edison Uno Initiative for Nikkei and Uchinaanchu Studies and the Department of Asian American Studies will have a Day of Remembrance program commemorating the unlawful incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II on February 19, 2026  from 5:30 to 7 pm. The event will also provide space to reflect on contemporary experiences of racialized violence and xenophobia.

This year’s program will feature a special exhibition of the Wakasa Spirit Stone, along with a ceremony honoring the 19 San Francisco State University students who were incarcerated during WWII.
 

Image above: AAS MA professors and students gathering 

Professor Wesley Ueunten will be presenting at Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Okinawa speaks back to tourist-centric narratives by centering Indigenous, place-based ways of knowing and telling. Through a rich collection of oral stories, the volume introduces leading decolonial projects and practices that reimagine Okinawa not as a singular island, but as an archipelagic, oceanic, and diasporic formation—rooted in histories that span multiple islands, seas, and continents, and shaped by long trajectories of resistance, survival, and resurgence. 

Departmental and Faculty Updates

Emeritus Professor José Cuellar joined the ancestors on January 21, 2026. A trained anthropologist, he brought his love of music to the department of Latina/Latino Studies in 1990 and retired in 2009. Throughout his life he joined many picket lines and played benefit concerts as the front man of Dr. Loco’s Rockin’ Jalapeño Band – fighting for immigrant rights, in support of farmworkers, and in solidarity with many other struggles.

Photo credit: Beth LaBerge/KQED

Latina/Latino Studies alumna (Class of 2018) Professor Arianna Vargas will begin an Assistant Professor position at Santa Clara University’s Sociology department in Fall 2026. Arianna was the 2018 College of Ethnic Studies undergraduate hood recipient and received her MA in Ethnic Studies in 2020. She currently supports our students as the Ethnic Studies Metro Academy Coordinator and is teaching LTNS 465: Mexican American and Chicana/x/o History.

Professor Carolina Prado has been conducting new research for her book project on the organizing culture of her long time community partners the Colectivo Salud y Justicia Ambiental. She has conducted two focus groups with the fifteen activists that work in this environmental justice collective, and will conduct two more focus groups this Spring semester. 

Professor Leticia Hernández-Linares’ poem, "Mission Fuchsia," was published in The Gentle Storm // of No Sleep a Central American folio in the latest Fall 2025 edition of the literary magazine, Huizache. For this project, she recruited and mentored a group of emerging writers (that included two SFSU alumnae), and they also have poetry published in the folio. In other publication news, Hernández-Linares’ translation of poet Lourdes Ferrufino’s work appeared in the New England Review 46.2 (2025).

Professor Bárbara Abadía-Rexach published "Chicanos, Hispanos, and Latinos" in M. Moraña & M. Valerio (Eds.), Mapping Diversity in Latin America: Race and Ethnicity from Colonial Times to the Present (Vanderbilt University Press) and she co-authored the essay entitled "NEGRAS: expandiendo las voces de las mujeres negras y reeducando sobre las negritudes," which appears in ICHAN TECOLOTL. She also published the blog entry: “Alter ego” for Letras Kaffres (https://www.letraskaffres.com/post/alter-ego). 

Departmental and Faculty Updates

At the beginning of last year, RRS hired RRS major and GUPS president, Ziniab Imtair, as a peer recruitment and retention specialist. Ziniab has made a number of presentations in RRS classes and hosted two fabulous mixers—one in which the students played jeopardy against faculty, and won (because they cheated). Lol. Dr. Larry Salomon has been instrumental in helping Ziniab build community among students.

Professor Che Rodriguez has been busy calling out the establishment. He gave a talk on Constitution Day about the CFA campaign to shut down California prisons and divert the savings to the CSU. He also delivered a talk on racial capitalism for The People’s Forum in New York, an educational series organized by Dr. Rama Kased.

Professor Rama Kased has just been awarded a Sabbatical for fall of next year.

Professor Falu Bakrania has finished a multi-part project with 4 other SFSU colleagues, one part of which is the creation of a public Queer and Trans Ethnic Studies syllabus. Working with online pedagogy genius RRS lecturer aa Valdivia, this course is now available for anyone at SFSU to take. She has also created a new course that she’s teaching this fall, “RRS 425: Critical Exposures: Race, Racism, and Resistance in Photography.” This is also her last year as chair, after 7 years, which she is VERY happy about.

RRS has new fly hoodies! We are selling them for 25 for students and 50 for everyone else; the funds go directly to our student scholarships.

Finally, with impetus from Professor Jason Ferriera, RRS will be putting together a podcast series, with the goal of centering student voices and increasingly using podcasts as a pedagogical tool.

Updates

Since 2025, Metro has been experiencing reductions. This last Fall, we experienced these changes with our staff

• Celia Graterol retired at the end of last semester
• Danny Gabriner has been moved to institutional research

METRO is working on a climate justice unit this semester to integrate into curriculum.  We are also  in conversation with Undergraduate Admissions and Recruitment to opt in Metro students beginning Fall 2026

Our METRO faculty have been involved in various professional development including the following:

Professor Tina Bartolome and Professor Angelina Moles delivered gender justice workshops for staff and faculty

Professor Arianna Vargas and Professor Tina Bartolome are attending the Sumud in Praxis: Teaching Solidarity from Turtle Island to Palestine conference in Tuscon mid-February

From CEETL's homepage: The Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEETL) is the heart of the University’s commitment to a culture that values and rewards teaching. From our ABC's of equity-minded teaching and learning to our Pedagogies for Inclusive Excellence (PIE) institutes and certificates, our faculty development programming is dedicated to providing a caring environment for the campus community to engage in conversations and activities that promote social justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in teaching and learning. 

CEETL offers a number of workshops and development programs for teachers on campus, please see link for opportunities and offerings this semester. 

See their calendar for more events. 
 

ORSP Small Grants Program 2026–27

The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) Small Grants program supports new or ongoing research projects and scholarly activities, including creative works and community-engaged activities, that encourage application to externally funded opportunities and/or bring external recognition to the applicant and San Francisco State University. The program is open to all SFSU faculty (see request for proposals for some restrictions) and the grant amount is up to $14,000. The application deadline is March 13 at 5 p.m.  More details, including the request for proposals, are available on the application site. For questions, contact Thien Lam, Grant Development Specialist, at ttlam@sfsu.edu. Grant preparation workshops are offered February 16, 3 p.m.–4:30 p.m. and February 27, 10:00 a.m.–11:30 a.m. RSVP to Kate Hamel, Faculty Director for Research Engagement and Development, at hamelk@sfsu.edu for Zoom link.