Sonia Christine Gomez
I'm a first generation college graduate and an Assistant Professor of history at Santa Clara University. I specialize in 20th century United States history and I am deeply interested (read: obsessed) in comparative race and ethnic relations; migration and diaspora, particularly as it intersects with gender and sexuality; and social movement history. I am currently working on my first book project, A Gendered Diaspora: Intimacy and Empire in the Making of Japanese America, 1908-1952, under contract with New York University (NYU) Press.
I earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago in 2018 and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University the following year. Before Harvard, I was a Pre-doctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a joint appointment in History and Global Studies and Languages. Before Chicago, I earned my B.A. in History with high distinction from the University of California, Berkeley. I began my intellectual journey at Antelope Valley College, a community college in the Antelope Valley, CA where I grew up. I took classes part-time for several years while working and raising a family. In 2008, I (finally) completed an Associate of Arts degree, becoming the first in my family to earn a college degree. I transferred to the University of California, Berkeley soon after. Before heading into academia I spent almost a decade working as a licensed esthetician (I'm still licensed, actually). |
Japanese War Brides in Post-WWII America, Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois in July 2018. View on Chicago CAN TV here.
Photo from the War Brides Symposium sponsored by the Japanese American National Museum and USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. View on C-SPAN here.
Interracial Intimacies Symposium, University of Chicago, April 2018. Full program can be found here.