Gomez, Abel R.

Image of Abel R. Gomez

Assistant Professor, Native American and Indigenous Studies

Email

Preferred: abel.gomez@sjsu.edu

Office Hours

Mondays, 12 - 1 PM (Fall 2025)

Education

  • Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Religion, Certificate of Advanced Studies, Women's and Gender Studes, Syracuse University, 2021
  • Master of Arts (MA), Religious Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2015
  • Bachelor of Arts (BA), Philosophy and Religion, Minor, Anthropology, San Francisco State University, 2013

Bio

Abel R. Gomez is Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies at San José State University. His research and teaching examine the relationships between sacred sites, ceremony, gender and sexuality, Indigenous cosmologies, and (de)colonization. Dr. Gomez engages in ethnographic research about and with Ohlone tribal communities in the San Francisco Bay and Monterey Bay regions to theorize enduring meaning of homeland and coalitions to protect sacred sites.

Dr. Gomez’s scholarship is published in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, and Political Theology. Dr. Gomez’s book Living on Indigenous Land: Sacred Sites, Ceremony, and Solidarities is under contract with University of Washington Press. His public-facing scholarship is featured in numerous online publications, podcasts, and on YouTube.

He earned a PhD in the academic study of religion with a focus on Indigenous spirituality. Dr. Gomez’s service has included serving on the steering committee for the Native Traditions in the Americas Unit in the American Academy of Religion. For years he has worked closely with the Center for Religion and Cities at Morgan State University, including facilitating fellowships in public scholarship and incorparing Indigenous studies in high schools. 

Before joining San José State, Dr. Gomez was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Native American Studies Department at University of Oklahoma and Assistant Professor of Religion at Texas Christian University. His community work includes collaborations with local tribes and organizations such as the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS).

A first-generation queer Latinx scholar from a Mexican and Central American immigrant family, Dr. Gomez was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ohlone homelands.

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