Maura Bernales

Dr. Bernales received her Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2009 before joining the sociology department at GSU. Since 2009, she has also been affiliate faculty with Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS).

She is a feminist sociologist broadly interested in dynamics of power and inequalities, gender, sexualities, and LGBTQ communities. She regularly teaches Gender & Society, Sex & Society, Queer Identities, Activism, Protest, & Revolution, and Girls. She has also taught Special Topics courses on LGBT Family Studies and Fourth Wave Feminist Body Politics. Her courses offer an intersectional approach to matters of social justice, liberation, and resilience.

In the department of sociology, Dr. Bernales serves as Director of Instruction, where she teaches the departmental teacher training sequence for graduate students and serves as the chair of the department's Teaching Committee. She is also the Director of Graduate Studies for the WGSS.

Dr. Bernales has published on the politicization of gay and lesbian parenting, whiteness and race-based decision making in lesbian donor choices, gender socialization in gay-parent homes, butch lesbians and pregnancy, trans men and parenting, trans women and HIV risk, professional allies to LGBTQ students on college campuses. In popular books and magazines, she has published on queer femme organizing in LGBTQ communities, queer lineage, queer potlucks, and the policing of women's sexuality.

She also runs a food blog about the social and cultural stories behind popular foods: foodsociology.com