Instructors and Staff

Latino families, later-generation Mexican Americans, and effective and responsive community service-learning in higher education.  

Dr. Christina Chávez-Reyes (a first-generation college student herself) joined Cal Poly Pomona in 2002 and is currently Professor and Chair of the department since 2014.  Graduated from the Stanford School of Education with a Ph.D. in Education focused on students from different language and cultural backgrounds, she worked as a research assistant studying young interpreters as gifted and talented. She has also taught English abroad in Japan and Mexico between her degrees. In her early years at CPP, she co-designed two interdisciplinary courses on the history of public education and contemporary issues in public education, including a successful service-learning program which is a distinguishing feature of the department today. Her research interests are in Latino families, later-generation Mexican Americans, and effective and responsive community service-learning in higher education. In her book, entitled, Five Generations of a Mexican American Family in Los Angeles, Dr. Chávez-Reyes chronicles the home, work and school lives of her family to identify the ways in which these three social spheres affected the plateauing of the family’s educational attainment (high school graduation and some college), a persistent trend that occurs in many Latino families. She has also published in the area of undergraduate teacher education and English language learner families and schools and has taught in the educational leadership doctoral program in CEIS. In her current work, she is focusing on creating new equitable college instructional environments to address success for all students, particularly those not historically served (low-income and first-generation college students, and underrepresented minorities). As a department leader, Dr. Chavez-Reyes led the semester conversion of the department’s program and has worked to expand department options and features. She is most focused on serving Liberal Studies student needs and interests to complete their degrees in a timely manner and with a quality and relevant education that prepares them for their desired careers and active civic lives. As a leader, educator, and community member, she hopes to provide Liberal Studies students with a professional model for how to translate college experience and a degree into a life of learning and serivce to others.

EDUCATION

   Stanford University                                                                                                           

• Ph.D. in Education, Language, Literacy, and Culture

   Northern Arizona University                                                                                             

• MA in Teaching in English as a Second Language

   University California, Santa Barbara                                                                               

• BA in Linguistics

G⁷History and sociology of education, first-generation college students, Chicanas and Latinas in higher education and abolitionist teaching.

Professor Estela Godinez Ballón – I grew up in San Diego, CA where I attended public schools throughout my education.  In college, I was a first-generation college and community college transfer student.  I proudly attended Grossmont College, San Diego State University and UCLA for my degrees in Sociology.  As is the case for many working-class first-generation college students, I didn’t have access to the academic knowledge and resources that would have helped to get me through college. But many working-class first-generation college students have their own lived knowledge and experiences and/or that of their families and communities to support them, and so I persevered.  My college path was unconventional for what used to be considered the typical college student but conventional for many working-class and first-generation college students. Now, I am very honored to be a professor and to work with students at Cal Poly Pomona. 

My family of origin is an important part of who I am.  I come from a family of nine and am 1 of 7 siblings.  My mother was born in Mexico City and came to the United States when she was 20 years old.  My father was born in Colton, CA—under a bed—and grew up both in San Diego, CA and in Tijuana, MX.  Even though both sides of my family came to the United States over one hundred years ago, we have had a history of working and living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Cognitive decline and cultural perceptions of African American, Latino, and Vietnamese populations in San Bernardino County; Effectiveness of public health policies related to substance use disorders; Implications of Video gaming on health behaviors; Urban agriculture and healthy food access.

Frecia Gonzalez is originally from New Jersey, she made her way to Southern California to attend graduate school, where she earned a Master’s in Public Health 2011 and is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Public Health from Loma Linda University . She has over 10 years of experiences in the field of public health involving substance abuse disorder prevention programs in San Bernardino County, a healthy communities initiative program in Pomona, and community building initiatives throughout Southern California. As an experienced leader, she brings a unique perspective, having worked with diverse communities on Community-based Participatory Research contributing to the evaluation of public policy effectiveness, cognitive decline and cultural perceptions, college students and health behaviors, and healthy food access. In her free time, she loves exploring nature, volunteering with local youth groups, and traveling.

Inclusion theory, radical love studies, transformative learning theory, critical disability theory, social interaction theory, stigma theory and social constructionism.

Rodney Hume-Dawson is an expert in Inclusive Practices, Education and Disability Studies. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and Philosophy, a Master’s in Teaching and Curriculum. He completed his Ph.D. in Education with emphasis on Disability Studies at Chapman University. He is a certified English Educator in Los Angeles, California. His dissertation was a phenomenological inquiry on the resilience of people with poliomyelitis. He has published several book chapters such as, Emerging Perspectives on Disability Studies, in A Spiritual and Transformative Perspective on Disability, edited by Wappett & Arndt.  Rodney teaches in the Liberal Studies Department and supervises Education Specialist Teacher Credentialed Candidates in the College of Education at Cal Poly, Pomona.

Dr. Hume-Dawson has lived with a physical disability almost all his life. He was diagnosed with poliomyelitis at the age of eighteen months old in Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa, where he was born and raised. The polio left him paralyzed from his waist down. In spite of his obvious disability, he was a curious and energetic child. His parents and some relatives saw in him a potential to succeed despite the prevailing attitudes about disability in Sierra Leone. Although he was refused schooling in a private school that his mother wanted him to attend, he was able to gain acceptance in a public school through the persistence of his family members.

Dr. Hume-Dawson’s intention, research, and teaching are mainly to educate, sensitize and transform the human mind about what he refers to as the three Ds - Difference, Disability, and Diversity. His provocative lectures are aimed at changing the status quo, deconstructing ideologies about disabilities, and transforming people’s attitudes about the question—what does it mean to be human?

American literature, women's literature, literature of the American west, American intellectual and cultural history. 

I am ideally qualified to teach in the Liberal Studies Department. I have a broad based interdisciplinary education and a wide range of teaching experience. I have a B.A. in English, an M.A. in English, an M.A. in American Studies, and a Ph.D. in American Intellectual History. I have taught all of these subjects, as well as Women’s History and Women’s Studies. I have an extensive record of scholarly research, publication, and professional activity. My research utilizes 19^th and early 20^th century rare books, manuscripts and photographs housed in library special collections throughout the United States. As a dedicated teacher-scholar, I am committed to undergraduate education. I enjoy teaching in the Liberal Studies Department and I love working with Liberal Studies students. I have received two Outstanding Faculty Awards from the Cal Poly Pomona Intercollegiate Athletics Program for my support of student athletes (2012-13 and 2017-18). I have also been honored by the Cal Poly Pomona University Housing Services’ College Themed Community Programs for my positive impact on students who live in on-campus housing (2017-18). I think Liberal Studies is the perfect major for students who are interested in the world around them and who hope to identify and develop their individual interests, educational goals and career objectives. 

Qualitative research (ethnography, participatory action research, and scholar-activism),undergraduate research mentorship, community and urban food systems, environmental justice, intersectional feminism and posthumanism.

Dr. Teresa Lloro earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Biology from the University of Redlands (Summa cum laude), followed by her Master’s of Science in Environmental Studies from California State University, Fullerton in 2009 and her PhD in Education, Society, and Culture from the University of California, Riverside in 2014. Her research is focused on the intersections of critical animal studies, critical food studies, and environmental education. In all of her projects, she uses a variety of qualitative research methods to understand how educational spaces and processes are inherently political and produce human-animal and human-nature relations within these political frameworks. She enjoys teaching Liberal Studies courses because they are interdisciplinary in scope and provide students with opportunities to understand the interconnectedness of social, ecological, and environmental issues, particularly as they relate to questions about equity and justice. The Animals & Society Institute and the Council on Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropological Association both recently selected her as an Early Career Fellow. Her forthcoming sole-authored book, Animal Edutainment in a Neoliberal Era, examines the politics of teaching and learning in aquariums and zoos. Her forthcoming co-edited book, Animals in Environmental Education: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Curriculum and Pedagogy, explores new curricular and pedagogical approaches in animal-focused education. Click here to view a list of Dr. Lloro-Bidart's selected publications.  

Transnational music and media, documentary filmmaking, interdisciplinary studies of gender and sexuality, decolonial feminist and queer theories, South Asia studies, theories of pedagogy, performance, and the everyday, musics of South Asia, West Asia/North Africa, North America, and Europe. 

Dr. Jeff Roy is a musician, filmmaker, and scholar with research and teaching experience in critical cultural studies, ethno/musicology, film and media studies, gender and sexualities studies, performance studies, and South Asia studies. His films, performances, and writings center the politics and performance of queer, transgender and hijra identity formations at the intersections of race, class, caste, and religion in South Asia and elsewhere. His award-winning films have screened at such institutions as the Director’s Guild of America, Film Society of Lincoln Center, British Film Society, Godrej India Culture Lab, and have been featured in magazines like Out Magazine and Vogue India.

Dr. Roy is a two-time Fulbright recipient (Fulbright-mtvU and Fulbright-Hays), a Project Involve Fellow at Film Independent Los Angeles, and a recent Postdoctoral Research Fellow with le Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS) à l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, France. Dr. Roy is nearing completion on a collaborative book project titled Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performances Across Borders in South Asia. This book concerns the repertoire of devotional prayers, songs, dances, and comic repartee performed by the socially marginalized hijra and khwaja sira communities in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Drawing from post-/decolonial studies, the book examines how badhai performances––and the cultures constituted by them––are mediated by encounters with transnational LGBTQIA+ identity politics and a changing landscape of gender and sexuality-based legislation, neoliberalism, and religious nationalism.

Dr. Roy's next book, provisionally titled Jamming the Script: Performance, Film, and Queer Possibilities in India, builds on this investigation to examine filmmaking as a research methodology and artistic practice within and across India's transgender, hijra, and queer-identified communities. Gathering sources on the history of place-based filmmaking in South Asia and using audio-visual footage from his own films produced in the field, the book explores film's legacy of colonialism and shows how queer filmmaking offers different possibilities of knowing and working through the forms, temporal arrangements, places and processes of scholarly and artistic inquiry. 

Education:

• Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles 
• M.A. in Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles
• B.A. in Comparative Arts, Washington University in St. Louis

Computer technology in visual arts, STEAM, cultural anthropology, contemporary and conceptual art, critical geography, feminist posthumanism and global philosophy of race, performance studies, political economy, white supremacy and capitalism.

Maya Stovall is a conceptual artist and anthropologist whose work has been correlated with study of systems, space, place, time, and power through neon art, video, artificial intelligence, performance, and computer technology. Stovall’s works are held in public permanent collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (2021); Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (2020); Cranbrook Art Museum (2018); and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2018). 

Major works involve projects for the Whitney Biennial (2017); University of Aarhus, Denmark (2017); the Whitney Museum of American Art (2017); the Studio Museum in Harlem (2018); Cranbrook Art Museum (2018); Aka Artist Run Saskatchewan, Canada (2018), Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (2019); San Francisco Art Institute (2019); White Columns (2020); Art Basel Miami Beach (2021); and Blaffer Museum, University of Houston (2021-2022). Ph.D. dissertation work, Liquor Store Theatre: Ethnography & Contemporary Art in Detroit, is the subject of her peer-reviewed academic book publication, Liquor Store Theatre (Duke University Press 2020). 

The major project, Inside Talk (2019-ongoing) is a study of global mass incarceration and telecommunications technologies from the perspective of detained community members and their families, including her brother. The major project, Neon Theatre (2019-ongoing) opens a paradigm for human reflection and speculation, casting time in neon lights and through neon abstraction. Stovall is an Associate Editor of American Anthropologist, the Journal of the American Anthropological Association. In addition to serving the university and broader community through engagement with diverse publics, she is faculty advisor and mentor to Liberal Studies and Visual Communication Design undergraduate research fellows within the Research through Inclusive Opportunities (RIO) Program in the Office of Undergraduate Research.

• Ph.D. Anthropology, Wayne State University
• M.B.A., University of Chicago Booth School of Business
• B.A., Howard University

Performance studies, theatre studies, affect theory, enactivism and 4E cognition, financialization and the arts, tragic and neotragic drama. 

With a PhD from University of California, Irvine, Zimmerman’s research focuses on the relationship between theatre and the process of financialization. His work has been published in Theatre Journal,  SubStance, Shakespeare Bulletin, La Deleuziana, TheaterForum, and Journal for Cultural Research and others. He is a writer, director, and producer of new theatre, and has served as artistic director of Padua Playwrights in Los Angeles since 2001. Under his direction, Padua has staged over fifty productions of new plays, moving several to stages in Atlanta, New York City, Edinburgh, Prague, Berlin, Beirut and Cluj, Romania. His own plays include Vagrant, The Inside Job, The Black Glass and Double Double.