Welcome to Transnational Studies Professor David Glisch-Sánchez, Ph.D.

We’d like to welcome our new Transnational Studies professor, Dr. David Glisch-Sánchez to the department! We’ve asked Dr. Glisch-Sánchez to answer a few brief questions to introduce you to him. We’re happy to have had to opportunity to do so. Enjoy!

Q: What is your field of expertise and how did you decide to pursue this/these field(s) of study?

A: My training is in sociology and public policy studies, but the nature of the research questions I have pursued have taken me into fields like Latinx studies, queer studies, sexuality studies, critical race theory, feminist theory (especially Black and Latina feminisms), and legal studies. No discipline or field has a monopoly on how to approach researching a topic or question; therefore, I am very utilitarian or practical in that sense, I go to whatever field or literature that will most help me answer the question(s) I have. With that said, if I had to declare what my specific fields or areas of expertise are, those would be: Latinx genders and sexualities; queer of color critique; sociology of emotions; Latinx sociology; sociology of race, class, and gender; Latina feminisms; social harm, violence, and trauma; and civil rights law and policy.

Q: What inspired you to work in academia as a professor? 

A: I don’t know if anything specifically inspired me to work in academia. What I will say is that I am a very curious person in general; I love learning about a lot of different subjects whether they are in my professional wheelhouse or not. This baseline curiosity, I suppose is what forms the very foundation of my desire to be a researcher. Beyond that, I absolutely love teaching undergraduates. Given my research and teaching interests, I don’t have a desire to teach (as a career) in a K-12 setting, mostly because of the institutional restrictions and having to deal with parents. I find teaching at the undergraduate level to be extremely fun and rewarding. Therefore, it seemed that being a professor was a good melding of my innate curiosity and love of post-secondary teaching.

Q: What brought you to the Transnational Studies department at UB? 

A: To answer this, I should say first that if I had to rank my membership in a particular intellectual tradition, I would describe myself as a Latinx studies specialist primarily (with a heavy sociological/qualitative research orientation). Since Transnational Studies is home to the Latinx studies minor program along with other ethnic studies areas, TNS seemed like a natural fit for me, especially since the hope is to revitalize this area both within the department and at UB as a whole.

Q: What are your current research interests?

A: Currently, my energy and focus is in the completion of my book manuscript, tentatively titled Algorithms of Pain: Queer Latinxs, Doloropolitics, and Social Harm, which is a book-length investigation into how emotions operate as a critical technology of the social harm permeating Latinx queer lives. In particular, the book seeks to document and theorize the dominant ideologies and practices that render queer Latinx pain both illegible and unremarkable, and those sociopolitical arrangements that produce a rupture making Latinx queer pain visible and urgent. This project most directly engages those bodies of literature addressing Latinx genders and sexualities, sociology of emotion, social harm (or zemiology), queer of color critique, and affect theory.

With that said, in the next three to five years I plan to return to an earlier interest of mine: civil rights law and policy. I am very curious to understand the experiences of people, groups, and organizations who have filed formal complaints around violations of fair housing or equal employment opportunity, and what their experiences teach us about the institutional ideologies, practices, and cultures of the agencies and offices designed to enforce fair housing and equal employment opportunity law. My hope is to utilize the knowledge gained from a sociological investigation and analysis of civil rights enforcement as a foundation for reimagining a robust civil rights framework and practice that can effectively confront and eliminate white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative, cisnormative, xenophobic, and ableist practices.

Q: What types of classes can students at UB hope to take with you in the future? What coursework and research do you hope to introduce to, and inspire, UB students to pursue? 

A: Currently, I am teaching “Latinx Genders & Sexualities,” which is a survey course that explores the major theories, debates, concepts, and topics that permeate the subfield of Latinx genders and sexualities; it is one of my favorite courses to teach. Additionally, this semester I am teaching a course called “Public Policies & Social Justice,” which is a lower division class that introduces students to both the academic field and profession of public policy by rooting our learning and analysis in a social justice framework that views love and intersectionality as critical policy tools. The major policy areas we explore in this class are housing and reproductive justice.

In the future, at the undergraduate level, I plan on offering “Introduction to Latinx Studies,” which will hopefully serve as the new anchor class for the Latinx Studies minor. Other Latinx studies courses I hope to teach are “Latina Feminisms” and “Queer Latinidades.” As a companion course to “Public Policies & Social Justice,” I am planning on offering an upper-division course on civil rights law and policy.

At the graduate level, I am planning on offering “Emotions & Power” in Fall 2019, which is an interdisciplinary look at how and why emotions are a central element and mechanism in systems of power and domination. The course will draw heavily on the sociology of emotions and affect studies. Beyond this seminar, I hope to offer a course on qualitative methods and research design and a pro-seminar on doing applied research in the humanities and social sciences.

In general, I hope to offer an array of courses that empowers students to pursue their own intellectual curiosity. With that said, I do hope to raise the profile and awareness of Latinx studies here at UB where I think there is an untapped and unmet desire and need within the UB student body (undergrad and grad) for classes in Latinx studies; a need and gap that I am eager to work with the college and university administration to address and rectify.

Q: What advice would you offer to students taking or planning to take one of your classes? 

A: First, I would stress that I believe strongly in the innate brilliance of every student who enters my classroom; every human has the capacity to think deeply, critically, and most importantly self-reflexively. For me this statement is not theoretical or philosophical, but rooted in the empirical realities of my 10+ years in the classroom. As a result, I have very high standards for each of my classes, because to do otherwise, in my opinion, would be to believe that your students have some fundamental deficit or lack, and I just do not accept that. This, however, does not mean I do not work hard to meet students with where they are at; in fact, I design my classes with a fair amount of flexibility to work with students on their own individual learning journeys.

The greatest piece of advice that I would give to anyone entering my class, or anyone’s class, is that the most critical element that any student can bring to a course is effort. No one can learn a topic, skill, or subject matter unless they are willing to put in the labor to get to the desired level of competency, proficiency, or mastery.  Effort must be made in attending class, reading assigned texts, taking notes, and maybe most importantly, effort to communicate with an instructor, especially if something is going on in the classroom or your life that is presenting a challenge to your learning. So, without a doubt, effort is key; I can work with effort, great things can happen when an effort is made.

Q: If you could require students to read one thing before they graduate, what would it be and why?

A: So, I am going to cheat and recommend two texts, but for very different reasons. The first book I highly recommend, for intellectual purposes primarily, is Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. This book as radically shaped my intellectual trajectory and scholarly orientation; however, I would add that I love this book because it was one of the very first texts that I ever read where I found my complete self in the pages, so it was and is a personally transformative work. I think this book is foundational and world-shifting because it produces knowledge and wisdom through a number of different methodologies—art, history, spirituality, personal narrative—that speaks simultaneously to the great pain that social inequalities produce and a pathway for personal and collective healing to achieve a new world, or as Anzaldúa calls it el mundo zurdo.

The second book I really encourage folks to check out is Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedon (A Toltec Wisdom Book). The four agreements he outlines are: 1) be impeccable with your word; 2) don’t take anything personally; 3) don’t make assumptions; and 4) always do your best. I hate the term “self-help,” because I think the phrase relies on some very damaging neoliberal ideas around the notion of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” I use the term self-work, and I believe everyone has work to do that at one level is personally transformative, but can have an incredible reverberating effect on their social environment. Ruiz’s book is a very short text, less than ninety pages, that I think provides an incredibly accessible curriculum and knowledge that lends itself to being a great starting text that can motivate and inspire self-work. I believe self-work is a vital activity because our social context at almost every level is incredibly toxic and damaging; self-work is our effort to interrupt those norms and ideologies that harm and constrain us.

Q: Outside of academia, what are some of your hobbies/interests? 

A: This is easy: I’m a big geek, and am really into geek culture of all kinds. I love sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural, and superhero genres/texts. I came into geekdom first as a child by watching Star Trek: The Next Generation (Guinan is my favorite character in the whole Star Trek universe). Lately, I’ve gotten into comic books and am reading a number of series right now, including Iceman (Marvel), Black Panther: The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda (Marvel), Border Town (DC Vertigo), House of Whispers (DC Vertigo), and X-men Black (Marvel). My fave geek TV shows are: Star Trek: TNG (of course!), Supernatural, The Flash, Avatar: The Last Air Bender, Teen Wolf and Shadowhunters. There are way to many movies to name, but some of my all-time faves are: The Core, Pacific Rim, Underworld (the whole series), Harry Potter (all of them of course), Black Panther, Wonder Woman, and Suicide Squad (I know I am in the very small minority on this one). Beyond this, I love playing and cuddling with my two shih tzus: Madison and Brooks.

Thank you, again, Dr. Glisch-Sánchez, for your time and for sharing your interests and thoughts with us! We’re happy to have you here at UB in the Transnational Studies Department. We’ve linked his faculty bio here if you’re interested in learning more about Dr. Glisch-Sánchez.