CHSS Distinguished Alumni - Women and Gender Studies

CHSS Distinguished Alumni

Eric N. Gonzaba

MA History '14, CERG Women and Gender Studies '14, PhD History '19

Eric Gonzaba  is an assistant professor of American studies at California State University, Fullerton, where he teaches courses on the history of race and sexuality in America. Gonzaba received his master’s in history and a graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies from Mason in 2014. He completed his PhD in American history at Mason in the spring of 2019.  
 
The digital history skills he gained at Mason led him to create several award-winning digital humanities projects. These include: Wearing Gay History, an online archive and museum that explores the global history of LGBTQ people via t-shirts. The project won the National Council on Public History’s top student prize in 2016. His latest project, which he co-directs with fellow Patriot, Amanda Regan, PhD History ’19, is titled, Mapping the Gay Guides and explores the history of queer American spaces using historical gay travel guides. The National Endowment for the Humanities recently awarded Mapping the Gay Guides $300,000 to support expansion of the site for the next three years.  
 
Gonzaba’s work has previously been supported by grants and fellowships from the University of Pennsylvania, the Point Foundation, and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. He currently serves as co-chair of the committee on LGBT History, the oldest queer historian organization in the United States.