Website—Biographies: Academic Biography

Academic Biographies

Academic Biography (short)

Eric Rofes is Associate Professor of Education at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. His research focuses on charter schools and school reform, gay & lesbian issues in K-12 schools, and HIV-prevention and education.

Academic Biography (long)

Eric Rofes is Associate Professor of Education at Humboldt State University (HSU) in Arcata, California. A graduate of Harvard College, he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Studies from the University of California's Graduate School of Education. He teaches courses in community organizing, social foundations of schools, leadership studies, teaching in higher education, and gay & lesbian issues in K-12 schools. Prior to HSU, Dr. Rofes taught at U.C. Berkeley and Bowdoin College.

Dr. Rofes has published twelve books, most recently The Emancipatory Promise of Charter Schools: Toward a Progressive Politics of School Choice, edited with Lisa Stulberg (State University of New York Press, 2004); Youth and Sexualities: Pleasure, Subversion, and Insubordination in and out of Schools, edited with Mary Louise Rasmussen and Susan Talburt (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2005); and A Radical Rethinking of Sexuality and Schooling: Status Quo or Status Queer, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). He has also written scholarly books on gay men's post-AIDS cultures and the impact of HIV on urban gay men in the United States.

Dr Rofes's current research projects focus on male elementary school teachers, gay men's cultures of the 1970s, the politics surrounding charter schools, new HIV infections among gay-identified men, and teacher identity and pedagogical practices. He is an active member of the Pacific Sociological Association, where he serves on the program committee for the 2006 annual meeting, and the American Educational Research Association, where he serves on the program committee for the 2006 annual meeting for the queer studies focus group.

At HSU, he serves as program coordinator for the Multicultural Leadership Studies Program, a faculty member of the Department of Education, affiliated faculty member in Women's Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Multicultural Queer Studies, and as a member of the interdisciplinary M.A. in Environment and Community program. He is the coordinator of the North Coast Education Summit and serves as a faculty partner with the Indian Teacher Educational Personnel Program. He served as program leader for the Elementary Education Credential Program 2001-2005.