Jonathan D. Gomez
San José State University
Dr. Jonathan D. Gomez is a Chicano scholar and poet who serves as Chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies, and Director of the Ethnic Studies Collaborative at San José State University. He earned his doctorate in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with an emphasis in Black Studies.
Born and raised in the barrio of City Terrace in East Los Angeles, Dr. Gomez credits his earliest teachers- his family and neighbors- with nurturing his commitment to learning and community engagement. Throughout his educational journey, he benefited from sustained mentorship, training, and institutional support that shaped his development as a dedicated scholar.
Dr. Gomez is the founder, director, and facilitator of the Culture Counts Reading Series, a transformative pedagogy initiative that partners with public libraries to empower participants to use poetry and storytelling as tools for advocacy and imagining just and meaningful futures. His research and teaching center on race, ethnicity, and space, with particular attention to how communities facing dispossession and displacement envision and enact cultural practices to claim concrete urban spaces as strategies for resisting imposed, unlivable futures.
