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Title: Associate Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies & Faculty-in-Residence for Hispanic Serving Institute Initiatives in the Office of the Provost at San José State University
Tenured: Yes
Age: 40
Education: B.A., sociology, emphasis in community studies, University of California, Santa Cruz; Ph.D., sociology, emphasis in Black studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Career mentors: Christine Rodriguez, J.D., East Los Angeles College; Dr. Larry Trujillo, UC Santa Cruz; Dr. George Lipsitz, UC Santa Barbara; Dr. Magdalena Barrera, San José State University
Words of wisdom/advice for new faculty: ”Start with what you know to learn what you don’t know. Start with where you’re at to get to where you want to go.” – Kalamu ya Salaam, poet, activist, and educator
The first sentence of his bio on the San José State University website reads, “[Dr.] Jonathan D. Gomez is a Chicano scholar and poet.” The third sentence credits his “mother, grandparents, and tías for nurturing his passion for study and community engagement.”
That explains quite a bit about Gomez’s scholarship, teaching methods and service.
Dr. Anne Marie Todd, Dean of the College of Social Sciences, says Gomez’s research “provides the foundation for his teaching and service . . . that embodies his goals of rigorous social science inquiry and community engagement through respectful relationship building.”
In his own description of his various projects, Gomez often mentions those same terms: community engagement and building relationships. For example, he founded and facilitates the Culture Counts Reading Series, a bi-weekly poetry reading, writing and discussion workshop featuring works by San José poets.
“We use poetry as a vehicle to build relationships with community members,” Gomez explains. “Right now, we have a wonderful collaboration with the Santa Clara County Public Defenders’ Office where we invite people who are ‘system impacted’—who have had experience with the criminal legal system—to share their stories and to re-story their lives with poetry.”
Gomez says the reading series helps participants build connections with people in the community who are willing to be advocates and to assist them in finding services and resources.
“I’m very blessed to be able to work with artists and activists and to think about how to utilize the things they teach me to create a classroom environment where I respect the knowledge and traditions our students bring in,” Gomez says.
His 2022 essay, “Where’s the Gig at? Chicanx Punk Rock Cultures and the Politics of the ‘Mission’ in Forgotten Places of East Los Angeles,” examined the involvement of young residents of East Los Angeles neighborhoods in punk rock cultures. Published by Aztlan, the journal of Chicano studies, the article explored the use of city streets, public transit vehicles and alleys as “part of a complex process of cognitive mapping for young people who own no property of their own, whose movements are aggressively policed, and who must create unexpected uses for seemingly routine and functional places and spaces.”
His current book project, El Barrio Lindo: Chicanx and Latinx Social Space in Forgotten Places of Postindustrial Los Angeles, expands upon his earlier work by examining “the ways in which people who have been dispossessed and displaced envision and enact cultural practices to take possession of concrete spaces across the city as strategies for refusing the unlivable destinies to which they have been relegated.”
Gomez also has published five creative poetry works “thereby linking the social science inquiry to other forms of creative expression,” Todd says. He teaches courses in race, space, and creative and cultural expression, and is also a faculty member with the Mosaic Cross Cultural Center.
For his teaching and service, Gomez has received recognition at the college, university and community levels, including the College of Social Science Teaching Excellence Award.
At the campus level, Gomez is faculty advisor for the student organization Semillas de Centro America, which seeks to sustain a supportive community for Central American students and community members. He also facilitates a leadership retreat for Chicanx/Latinx Student Success Center, also known as Centro.
Gomez serves as the campus’s Faculty-in-Residence for Hispanic Serving Institute Initiatives. In addition to those activities, he hosts nine monthly workshops for faculty participants and presents a showcase of faculty work for the larger campus.
Despite the accolades and recognition he has received, Gomez is quick to praise the wisdom and insight of his students, mentioning the “privilege” of teaching and learning from them.
“Sometimes we think that scholars are special kinds of people, but every person who enters our classroom is a special kind of scholar,” he says. “As the educator, it requires me to listen closely to the things that students are saying and to learn from our students and to give them time and attention to recognize the things they are interested in and the things they bring to the table.”