Board of Directors
Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa. His most recent book is White Men Challenging Racism: 35 Personal Stories (Duke University Press) and his next is Superman is Jewish?: How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice and the Jewish-American Way (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2011). He is editor of The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies (Routledge), A Mensch Among Men: Explorations in Jewish Masculinity (Crossing), and (with Michael Kaufman) Theorizing Masculinities (Sage). He was Director of the Iowa Regent Universities Men’s Gender Violence Prevention Institute, and held a Fellowship in Law and Philosophy at Harvard Law School. He is a child of Holocaust survivors and father of two children.
James Doyle, Ph.D. (ex officio)
Professor of Psychology at Roane State Community College in Harriman, Tennessee. His work in gender/men’s studies began in the early 1970s when he co-authored an attitudinal scale dealing with men’s roles, The Attitudes toward Male Role Scale (AMRS). Doyle also wrote The Male Experience (1982, 1989, 1994), which was the first single-voice overview of the emergent field of men’s studies. Doyle’s second college-level text, Sex and Gender: The Human Experience (1985, and 1990, 1994, & 1998 with co-author, Michelle Paludi), which was one of the first gender texts to present both female and male perspectives. In 1992, Doyle was among the founders of AMSA. Jim is the Editor, The Journal of Men’s Studies.
Mark Giesler, M.S.W., Ph.D. (Recorder) (2010)
Assistant Professor of Social Work at Saginaw Valley State University in University Center, Michigan. His research interests include men and masculinities on the margins of gender identity and sexual orientation and child welfare issues. He is the recent recipient of two research grants, one from SVSU and the other from the Zero to Three Foundation. For the former, he is studying the recruitment and retention experiences of male social work students. For Zero to Three he is co-investigator for a qualitative study exploring the provision of services for infants and toddlers in foster care. He is also on a Board for the Council for Social Work Educators and is his region’s representative for the National Association of Social Workers–Michigan chapter. He is the proud father of two adopted boys.
Whitney Stewart Harris, Ph.D. (2010)
Executive Director for Diversity and Multiculturalism, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System in St. Paul, Minnesota. Current research project: The exploration of performance of masculinity and the stereotypical African- American rambling man through postmortem storytelling. On-going research project: Same-gender loving African American males on predominantly white campuses.
Marlen Harrison, M.A. (2010)
Adjunct faculty in the English Department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and completing his Ph.D. (ABD) in Composition and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Harrison spent four years teaching English at Japanese universities and at the Osaka International School. His interest is Applied Linguistics. He holds an MA in Education and Human Development from The George Washington University where he specialized in Psychological Counseling and Expressive Arts Therapies. Personal Webpage.
Robert Heasley, Ph.D. (President) (2010)
Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Indiana, Pennsylvania where he teaches courses in the area of sexuality, men and masculinities, and social theory. He is an an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the SUNY Upstate Medical School where he teaches seminars for medical students on working with patients on issues related to sexuality, and is also pursuing certification as a Relationship and Family and Therapist. Robert’s scholarship is focused on non-traditional representations of heterosexual masculinities, or “differently straight men.” He is coordinator of a photo-narrative project on men’s friendships documenting the images and stories of males who embrace feminism and pursue emotionally intimate and physically close relationships with other men, and in the process challenge the tradition of homophobia in American culture. His current research involves conducting interviews with straight-identified males who embrace feminism and are committed to ending the effects of homophobia in their lives. He is the co-editor of Sexual Lives: A Reader on the Theories and Realities of Human Sexualities (Heasley & Crane, McGraw-Hill, 2003).
Steve Hoover, Ph.D. (2012)
Professor and Chairperson of Counselor Education, Higher Education, and Educational Psychology at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Research interests include: school issues of men and boys, in particular dual-labeled boys; social norming of masculinity and spirituality; and, the teaching of men’s studies.
Stu Johnston, M.S., LMHC, NCC (2010)
A Mental Health Counselor at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He has been involved in introducing men’s issues to the campus via semester-long book discussions with male faculty and staff focusing on mentoring and masculinity. He lectures in Luther’s wellness course on sexual assault and consent and developed the first course in masculinities offered at Luther, which he taught in January of 2008. Luther is participating in the project funded by Lilly Endowment to identify best practices for increasing men’s involvement in service and vocational discernment activities.
Mark J. Justad, M.Div., Ph.D. (Treasurer) (2011)
Director of the Center for Principled Problem Solving at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. Mark has been a member of the board since 1996 and served as AMSA President 2000-2006. Currently he is AMSA’s Director of Communications. From 2003-2007 he was executive and associate director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture at Vanderbilt University.
Gar E. Kellom, M.A., Ph.D. (2011)
Executive Director of the Center for Men’s Leadership & Service at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. He is past Vice President of Student Development at Saint John’s University and a contributing author to: The Male Experience, James A Doule ed, (forthcoming), Hindu Tantric Leadership, Monohar Publishers, (forthcoming), and “Men and Spiritual Journey” in The Journal of Men’s Studies (forthcoming).
Don Levy, Ph.D. (Vice President) (2011)
Director of the Siena Research Institute at Siena College in Loudonville, New York. Currently working on three projects. First a community asset and needs assessment, second the beginnings of an oral history project focused on mining life in WV, and finally a film chronicling community in the high plains of Bolivia. And finally, I’m finalizing articles based on my research on the relationship between sport consumption (fantasy sports) and masculinity.
James P. Maurino, M.S.W., Ph.D. (2012)
Assistant Professor of Human Development (Psychology) and Human Services at SUNY/Empire State College in Buffalo, New York. He teaches a range of psychology and human services courses, including Human Sexuality and studies that explore the social construction of gender roles, with a focus on our traditional and emerging views of masculinity, sexual orientation and the fluidity of such labels, the socialization of boys, and grief and loss expressed in masculine terms. His past research has focused on the experience of grief for men, including gender role strain with regard to loss, and the emotional and instrumental ways that men often grieve. His current research, concentrating on qualitative inquires, is focused on hospice services for racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities, and the lack of both rites of passage and appropriate education for pre-pubescent boys, using the recollections of adult men in relaying their experience of such. Besides having a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology, he also holds an M.S.W. that preceded his doctoral work.
Robert N. (Bob) Minor, M.A., Ph.D. (2011)
Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at The University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. His fields of study include religion and gender, religion and sexuality, and religion in South Asia. He is the author of eight books, the most recent of which is When Religion Is an Addiction (HumanityWorks!), and the founder of The Fairness Project. He writes a column on romance and dating for babyboomers for 50PlusPrime.com and a monthly column for Mensstuff.org, and is the proud father of a grown son.
Richard Pitt, Ph.D. (2012)
Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to finalizing essays on men’s household labor participation and status inconsistencies for gay black religious men, I am working on a manuscript about the call to ministry in pentecostal black churches. With Kris Papp, I coordinate AMSA’s men’s studies resource collection process. Personal webpage
Vicki L. Sommer, Ph.D., ACSW (Secretary) (2010)
Professor of Sociology and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. She has been an advocate for the development of the critical study of men and masculinities since first attending the 1994 AMSA Conference. She recently developed a major in Women’s and Gender Studies at Augustana that includes courses on both American and global masculinities. Her current research project is an examination of the images of masculinity in popular magazines.
Gilles Tremblay, Ph.D. (2012)
Professor of Social Work at Université Laval in Québec City, Québec since 2001 and an active member of the research team Masculinities & Society. He worked more than 20 years in a governmental community service as a social worker and has been involved in men’s issues for more than 25 years. All his research studies are in the field of studies on men and masculinities: fatherhood in underprivileged groups, school achievement in boys, men’s health, depression in men, suicide, sexually abused men, etc. He has trained about 3000 practitioners on how to work with more traditional men. For his recent sabbatical year, he travelled in 15 different countries in Asia, Africa, Oceania and Europe, meeting researchers, practitioners and men’s groups. He is working on networking researchers on men’s issues.
Daphne C. Watkins, Ph.D. (2012)
Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work and a Faculty Associate at the Program for Research on Black Americans at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her interests include: gender disparities in mental illness; health education and behavior; and intervention research. Currently, her work explores how gender role socialization influences mental health over the life course for black males. An anthropologist and health educator by training, she uses quantitative and qualitative methodologies to increase what we know about mental illness and how it impacts the health and health behaviors of black males. Her research agenda aims to (1) use evidence-based strategies to improve the physical and mental health of black males, and (2) increase knowledge about the relationship between culture, gender, and the social determinants that place black males at high risk for poor health status.
** Dates after each Board member’s name indicate final year of service of their current term.
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