Dr. Sasha Sanders
Assistant Professor
Office Location
Faculty Office North (47) 22-J
Office Telephone
TBD
Email Address
Courses
- Performance, Literature, & Culture (COMS 208)
- Critical Cultural Studies & Communicati (COMS 319)
Education
- Ph.D. in Communication, University of South Florida (2021)
- M.A. in Communication Studies, California State University Long Beach (2017)
- B.A. in Communication Studies and Minor in Marketing, California State University Long Beach (2015)
Notes
Dr. Sasha Sanders (she/her) joined the Communication Studies faculty at Cal Poly in 2024 as an Assistant Professor of Multi/Cultural Performance Studies. She is a proud Bay Area native, CSU alumna (Go Beach!), and former first-generation college student.
Dr. Sanders draws on autoethnography, performance, and Black feminist aesthetics to question and reimagine identity, power, and place. She extends Black feminist aesthetics by using DIY art, such as stop-motion animation and comics, as forms of democratized knowledge production. Her embodied, reflexive approach to exploring media and culture intersects with Performance Studies, Critical Cultural Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, and Comics Studies. Dr. Sanders examines what she defines as "arresting moments" of racialized gender, moments that disorient one's sense of self and place forcing them to question belonging, betweenness, and the possibilities of becoming. Dr. Sanders is invested in community engagement and Black feminist praxis. She facilitates comic workshops across the nation that inspire audiences to imagine liberated futures or “Gutter Futures.” In 2024, she was invited to facilitate her workshop for the inaugural SSCA Performance Studies Division public virtual symposium. Her virtual symposium workshop, “The Future is in the Gutters: Black Feminist Worldmaking Through Comics,” reached audiences in and outside of academia. Her interdisciplinary scholarship can be found in Text and Performance Quarterly, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, Journal of Autoethnography, Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies. Her forthcoming scholarship will be featured in Women’s Studies in Communication, Text and Performance Quarterly, and Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society.
Dr. Sanders is deeply passionate about teaching. In 2024, she was awarded the Dwight L. Freshley Outstanding New Teacher Award by the Southern States Communication Association. Dr. Sanders welcomes the breadth of knowledge and lived experiences that each student brings into the diverse classroom. Her courses provide a platform for student advocacy, critical reflection about our social world, and embodied un/learning opportunities that challenge the traditional docile role of student bodies. Engagement in her classes is collaborative, experiential, and experimental.
Outside of academia, Dr. Sanders loves to spend time with family, make fanart, read comics, binge watch tv series, and rewatch Hamilton: The Musical.