Ashley Aaron

Bio

Ashley D. Aaron is a lecturer at San Francisco State University, where she lectures in the Department of Africana Studies, and the Department of Race and Resistance Studies. She obtained her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Mills College (B.A., History of the Americas) and San Francisco State University (M.A., Ethnic Studies with an Africana Studies emphasis), respectively. In addition to working in higher education, she  brings more than ten years of experience working in education, the arts, and program development, and connects her passion and principles in this life to the legacy left to her by her ancestors, and those who advocated for the establishment of Africana Studies/Ethnic Studies in 1968-9.

Her research and teaching interests include Global Black liberation movements, the development and manifestation of racism and anti-racist resistance in the Americas, the legacy of Black women’s resistance to state-sanctioned anti-Black violence, Africana History & Art 1500-2000, and the histories and experiences of People of Color and Indigenous peoples in the U.S. As an educator and lifelong learner, she believes deeply that education should be a source of liberation, and in the statement given to us by the late, great, self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Audre Lorde, who said "The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot." She has been teaching in the College of Ethnic Studies since 2011. 

Couses Taught:

RRS 240: All Power to the People

RRS 100: Introduction to Ethnic Studies

ETHS 260: The African American and Western Racism

AFRS 204: Black Creative Arts

AAFRS 515: Black Family Studies