Email

Preferred: daniel.rivers@sjsu.edu

Alternate: daniel.rivers@sjsu.edu

Telephone

Preferred: 9233230445

Associate Professor of American Studies & Literature

Coordinator, Environmental Humanities (Certificate)

Senior Chair, Environmental Justice Caucus, American Studies Association (ASA)

Lambda Literary Fellow (2024)

Public Voices Fellow, The Op-Ed Project (2022-2023)

Director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies (2021-2025)

Education

Ph.D. in Cultural Studies & English, Claremont Graduate University

MA in Humanities & Social Thought, New York University

BA in Liberal Studies, Minor in English, Sonoma State University

Bio

Daniel Lanza Rivers (they/them) is a scholar and teacher in the areas of environmental humanities, American studies, queer and feminist studies, and U.S. literature. Their writing has appeared in American Quarterly, Terrain.org, the San Francisco Chronicle, Women's Studies, the Steinbeck Review, and the Journal of Transnational American Studies, as well as a few environmental humanities anthologies. They have received fellowships from Lambda Literary, Public Voices, Community of Writers, and the James L. Irvine Foundation.

Tentatively titled California Futures, Daniel's first book is forthcoming Duke University Press (Fall 2026/Spring 2027). This manuscript uses a case study format to explore both the history of settlers' speculations about California's natural environment, as well as alternative forms of "naturecultural" imagination that approach care for the environment as a rallying point for creating more equitable and resilient futures. The scope for this book is broad, moving from grizzly extinction (and reintroduction), to Central Valley agriculture, dam removal on the Klamath, and unhoused encampment in Oakland. As a work emerging at the juncture of feminist science studies, queer and feminist ecology, Native and Indigenous studies, Black studies, critical ethnic studies, California studies, and American studies, California Futures explores how decolonial movements for land return intersect with activist challenges to extractive racial capitalism and environmental injustice.

A 2024 Lambda Literary Fellow in creative nonfiction, Daniel's public and creative writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Terrain.org, Joyland, Apogee, Feral Bestiary, and Writing the Golden State: the New Literary Terrain of California. Daniel's work is also forthcoming in three edited collections: Sex Change and the City, Emerge: the Lambda Fellows Anthology, and In the Eyes of the Hungry: a John Steinbeck Horror Anthology.

As a public humanities specialist, Daniel served for four years as Director of SJSU's Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. While in this role, Daniel developed a robust public humanities portfolio, including author talks, concerts, curriculum integration, the International Steinbeck Society conference, and John Steinbeck "In teh Souls of the People" Award events for actor and activist Jane Fonda, as well as the authors and MacArthur Fellows Jacqueline Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming) and Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese). Daniel has also collaborated on environmental justice event series about water toxicity and wildfire in California.

Along with teaching in the American Studies program and English department at SJSU, Daniel has taught public-facing classes with the 92nd Street Y's Roundtable program, and presented at events in partnership with the Bill Lane Center for the West (Stanford), the Monterey Public Library, San José Martin King Luther Library, and the Chevy Chase Library in Washington D.C.. Daniel's research has been profiled in The California History podcast (May 2025).

An Associate Professor of American Studies and Literature at San Jose State University, Daniel teaches courses in environmental humanities, American studies, queer and trans studies, and US literature. They also supervise MA and MFA theses in the Department of English & Comparative Literature, and serve as the coordinator of the department's certificate in environmental humanities.

 

Courses Taught at SJSU:

AMS/HUM/RELS 180: Water & Culture

AMS/ENVS/HUM 159: Nature & World Cultures

AMS 139: Animals & Society

AMS 129: US in a Global Context

AMS 10: Stories that Make America

AMS 1B: American Cultures 1877 to Present

AMS 1A: American Cultures to 1877

ENGL 281:Environmental Futures (graduate)

ENGL 254: Environmental Horror and the Unnatural (graduate)

ENGL/WGSS 184: Queer and Trans Literary Studies

ENGL 167: Steinbeck

ENGL 70: Emerging Modernisms and Beyond

ENGL 30: Literature and the Environment

Links

Office Hours: M/W, 11:00-11:30, 4:30-5PM, Clark 441C

https://sjsu.academia.edu/DanielLanzaRivers