AMSA's Board of Directors
Stephen Boyd, M.Div, Th.D.
J Allen Easley Professor and Chair Department of Religion at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He teaches courses on the history of Christian thought and gender studies. He has authored Pilgram Marpeck: His Life and Social Theology; The Men We Long to Be: Beyond Lonely Warriors and Desperate Lovers; and Redeeming Men: Religion and Masculine Identity. He has served as a board member since AMSA’s founding and as AMSA's President and Vice-President, co-founded the Men’s Studies in Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion, co-chairs the Strategy Team of C.H.A.N.G.E. (Communities Helping All Neighbors Gain Empowerment) in Winston-Salem, NC, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice .
James Doyle, Ph.D. (ex officio)
Professor of Psychology at Roane State Community College in Harriman, Tennessee. His work in gender/men’s studies began in the early 1970s when he co-authored an attitudinal scale dealing with men’s roles, The Attitudes toward Male Role Scale (AMRS). Editor, The Journal of Men's Studies.
Sam Femiano, Th.D., Ed.D.
Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Northampton, MA. His area of special interest is men's issues, particularly working with men who have suffered childhood trauma. He is the founding president of AMSA. He taught theology at the University of Saint Thomas and Seton Hall College as well as graduate and undergraduate courses in psychology at the University of Massachusetts and Antioch University. He can be reached by email.
Whitney Stewart Harris, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Diversity and Multiculturalism, Minnesota State College and University System, St. Paul, MN. Current Research Project: The exploration of performance of masculinity and the stereotypical African American rambling man through postmortem storytelling. On-going Research Project: Same-gender loving African American males on predominantly white campuses.
Robert Heasley, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Recently he co-authored Sexual Lives: A Reader on the Theories and Realities of Human Sexuality
Stu Johnston, M.S., LMHC, NCC
A Mental Health Counselor at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He has been involved in introducing men’s issues to the campus via semester-long book discussions with male faculty and staff focusing on mentoring and masculinity. He lectures in Luther’s wellness course on sexual assault and consent and developed the first course in masculinities offered at Luther, which he taught in January of 2008. Luther is participating in the project funded by Lilly Endowment to identify best practices for increasing men's involvement in service and vocational discernment activities.
Mark J. Justad, M.Div., Ph.D.
Director of the Center for Principled Problem Solving at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. Mark has been a member of the board since 1996 and served as AMSA President 2000-2006. From 2003-2007 he was executive and associate director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture at Vanderbilt University.
Gar Kellom, Ph.D.
Executive Director of the Center for Men's Leadership and Service at St. John's University in Collegeville, MN. The Men's Center at Saint John's does annual events such as the Men’s Lives Series, Conference on the College Male (including the Father/Son Luncheon), Sophomore Halftime Celebration, and service projects at Ames School, an HIV Orphanage in the Caribbean and in Dharamsala, India. The Center has just received a $600,000 grant from Lilly Endowment to identify best practices for increasing men's involvement in service and vocational discernment activities, involving 14 colleges and 10 high schools doing pilot projects.
Don Levy, Ph.D.
Director of the Siena Research Institute at Siena College in Loudonville, New York. Currently working on three projects. First a community asset and needs assessment, second the beginnings of an oral history project focused on mining life in WV, and finally a film chronicling community in the high plains of Bolivia. And finally, I’m finalizing articles based on my research on the relationship between sport consumption (fantasy sports) and masculinity.
Robert N. (Bob) Minor, M.A., Ph.D.
Professor of Religious Studies at The University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. Religion and gender, religion and sexuality, religion in South Asia. He is the author of eight books and the founder of The Fairness Project.
Kris Paap, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow, Center for Women and Work at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Richard Pitt, Ph.D.
Assistant Dean of the Graduate School and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to finalizing essays on men's household labor participation and status inconsistencies for gay black religious men, I am working on a manuscript about the call to ministry in pentecostal black churches. With Kris Papp, I coordinate AMSA's men's studies resource collection process. Personal webpage
Jean-François Roussel, Ph.D.
Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Montreal
Vicki L. Sommer, Ph.D., ACSW
Professor of Sociology and Chair of Women's and Gender Studies Program at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. She has been an advocate for the development of the critical study of men and masculinities since first attending the 1994 AMSA Conference. She recently developed a major in Women's and Gender Studies at Augustana that includes courses on both American and global masculinities. Her current research project is an examination of the images of masculinity in popular magazines.
Alex J. Tuss, S.M., Ph.D.
Presently works for the Marianist Mission in Dayton, OH. He will travel to Africa in 2008 to develop Faces in Africa, a companion to Faces in India, a photographic essay designed to raise awareness and support for the work of the Marianists with the poorest in both India and Africa. He continues to explore issues of masculinity both in the US and abroad.