Michael Hames-García has been appointed the next director of the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon, effective July 2014.

Hames-García, a professor in ethnic studies, grew up in Portland and left after high school to attend school and work in New York, Indiana, Alabama and California. He returned to Oregon in 2005 and began working in the ethnic studies department at the UO. He served as department head from 2006 to 2011.

Hames-García’s research and teaching interests include Chicana/o, U.S. Latina/o and African American literatures and cultures; race and incarceration in the United States; gender and sexuality; and theories of identity and the self.

Hames-García is the author of “Identity Complex: Making the Case for Multiplicity and Fugitive Thought: Prison Movements, Race, and the Meaning of Justice.” He is the co-editor with Ernesto Martínez of the award-winning anthology, “Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader”; with Paula Moya of “Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism”; and with Linda Martín Alcoff, Satya Mohanty, and Paula Moya of “Identity Politics Reconsidered.”

The center has funded feminist scholarship at the UO for almost 40 years. Its mission is to create, fund and share research that addresses the complicated nature of gender identities and inequalities.

 - by Katherine Cook, UO Office of Strategic Communications intern