Rate My Professor Tomás Almaguer

Tomás Almaguer is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State University, where he joined the faculty in 2000 and was granted emeritus status in 2018. He previously served as Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies. A prominent figure in Social Science, Almaguer specializes in sociology, race and ethnicity, sexuality studies, Latino history, and women and gender studies. He earned a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, an M.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Berkeley in 1979. His dissertation, titled "Class, Race and Capitalist Development: The Social Transformation of a Southern California County, 1849-1902," laid foundational groundwork for his research on racial formation.

Almaguer's career includes distinguished appointments following postdoctoral fellowships: Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University’s Department of Sociology and Center for Chicano Research, Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, and NIMH Postdoctoral Fellowship. He was Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley, held tenured positions at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Michigan—where he served as Director of the Latino Studies Program and the Center for Research on Social Organization, and was named Arthur F. Thurnau Professor—and received a Bancroft Library Study Award. His seminal book, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (University of California Press, 1994; second edition, 2009), examines the historical struggles over resources, status, and political legitimacy among racial groups in California. Key publications also include “Chicano Men: A Cartography of Homosexual Identity and Behavior Differences” in Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies (1991), “Looking for Papi: Longing and Desire among Chicano Gay Men” in A Companion to Latina/o Studies (2007), “The Material and Cultural Worlds of Latino Gay Men” in Gay Latino Studies (2011), co-authored “Revisiting Activos and Pasivos: Towards New Cartographies of Latino and Latin American Male Same-Sex Desire” in Latino/a Sexualities: A Reader (2009), “The Latin Americanization of Race Relations in the United States” in Du Bois Review (2012), and co-editor of The New Latino Studies Reader: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective (University of California Press, 2016). At San Francisco State University, he taught LTNS 278: History of Latinos in the U.S., LTNS 505: Gender, Sexuality, and Latino Communities, and LTNS 707: Seminar in Latina/Latino Studies.