Email

Preferred: daniel.rivers@sjsu.edu

Alternate: daniel.rivers@sjsu.edu

Telephone

Preferred: 9233230445

Associate Professor of American Studies & Literature

Director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies

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

Creative Nonfiction Fellow, Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Writers, Summer 2024

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

 

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, and the James L. Irvine Foundation.

Tentatively titled California Futures, Daniel's first book is under contract with Duke University Press (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 studies and queer ecology, Native and Indigenous studies, Black studies, critical ethnic studies, California studies, and American studies, California Futures explores how Native, Indigenous, and decolonial movements for land return intersect with feminist, queer, and BIPOC critiques of 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 this year: 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 is finishing up a four-year term as Director of SJSU's Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. While serving as Director, Daniel developed a robust public humanities portfolio, which included author talks, concerts, and planning and hosting John Steinbeck 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 event series about water justice and wildfire in California.

Along with teaching in the American Studies program and English department at SJSU, Daniel has taught public-facing classes on Steinbeck for the 92nd Street Y's Roundtable program. Daniel's research will be profiled in The California History podcast in 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: Special Topics: 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: Special Topics: Environmental Futures (grad)

ENGL 254: Topics in US Literature: Environmental Horror and the Unnatural (grad)

ENGL/WGSS 184: Queer 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