Dr. Erica Misako Boas is a former elementary school teacher, mother of a three year old, and a scholar of sexuality and education. She teaches in the Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at San Jose State University. She studies articulations of sexuality and race in institutions of schooling and their function in the social organization of human lives with a focus on K-5 education. Her current research examines the racial implications of the implementation of comprehensive sex education in the Silicon Valley. In addition, since 2012 she has Co-Principal Investigator on a research project entitled Consent Stories (with Dr. J. Laker), which explores the ways in which college students experience, negotiate, and understand sexual consent. The overarching objective of her research is to inform new approaches toward the elimination of sexual violence in and out of schools. This interest is inspired by five years of teaching at San Francisco Bay Area public elementary schools and an on-going interest in exploring public schooling’s potential in effecting personal and social transformations. Erica Boas received her Ph.D. from the Social and Cultural Studies Program in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California at Berkeley where she also completed a Designated Emphasis in Gender, Women, and Sexuality. Selections of her published scholarship can be found in the journal Sex Education and the edited volume Sexualities and Education.
