DOC Faculty Biographies

Director, Dimensions of Culture Program

Director, Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies Program (2023-2025)

PhD, Literature, UC San Diego
MA, Literature, UC San Diego
BA, English Writing, University of San Francisco

As DOC Director, Dr. Amanda Solomon Amorao (also known as Dr. ASA) is committed to building and teaching in a program that helps Marshall students sharpen their critical reading, writing, and thinking skills through an investigation of the promises and paradoxes of U.S. culture and society. She received her MA and PhD in Literature from UC San Diego, and her research and teaching interests include U.S. multiethnic literature, Asian American Studies, Filipino/a/x American cultural productions, critical race studies, decolonizing pedagogies, and women of color feminism. Her most recent book project, a co-edited volume with DJ Kuttin Kandi and Jen Soriano entitled Closer to Liberation: Pin[a/x]y Activism in Theory and Practice, was published in fall 2021 by Cognella Academic Publishing. For the latest on Dr. Solomon’s writings and publications, visit www.ProfessorASA.com.

Dr. ASA has over two decades of experience teaching at UCSD, including serving as a teaching assistant then lecturer at Revelle Humanities and then as Associate Director of Writing at Sixth College’s Culture, Art, and Technology Program. She has also taught for UCSD’s Critical Gender Studies Program, Literature and Ethnic Studies departments, USD’s English department, and SDSU’s Center for Asian and Pacific Studies. When she isn’t teaching, Dr. ASA is active in the San Diego Filipinx American community. She proudly served from 2011 to 2017 as the Executive Director of the Kuya Ate Mentorship Program, a grassroots educational organization that empowers Filipino American youth in their exploration of history, culture, identity, and social justice. This work is close to her heart, especially as she raises her own daughters Amaya and Arya.

Associate Director, Dimensions of Culture Program

Karen Villegas is from the Inland Empire. She completed her B.A. in Political Science at UCLA and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Education at UC Berkeley. As a first-generation scholar who has navigated the UC system from undergrad to PhD, Karen is committed to fostering inclusive and critical learning environments in public education while improving and positively contributing to the system that has shaped her. She is passionate about creating spaces where students can critically engage with complex ideas and develop the tools to challenge power structures.

Her research examines how learning spaces in western education serve capital by reinforcing hierarchical orders and producing the seemingly deradicalized, depoliticized worker. Karen’s book project delves into these epistemological codes, rooted in U.S. Empire’s origin stories—histories of colonization, genocide, slavery—designed to protect capital through the exploitation of non-dominant communities, and how these codes are learned in the classroom. As such, her pedagogical approach focuses on unraveling these very codes to author new possibilities, new hopes, and new dreams outside of capital.

Dr. Strom currently serves as a full-time Lecturer in the Dimensions of Culture Program, teaching all three lower-division courses.

She has taught DOC 1 lectures since Fall Quarter 2015, as well as DOC 2 and 3 lectures since 2017.  She served as Interim Assistant Director of the DOC Program in 2017-18.

Dr. Strom earned her Ph.D. in History from UCSD in 2015.  She holds a Bachelor's degree in History from UC Davis, as well as an M.A. in Latin American Studies from UCSD's Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies (CILAS).  Her doctoral work examines the culture and Cold War politics of student movements in Uruguay during the 1950s and 60s.

Dillon Chapman (b.1995) is a San Diego-based artist, educator, and cultural critic. Her work is primarily concerned with practices of autofiction, autotheory, and hauntology, particularly as they relate to queer and trans/gender expansive histories of written and visual culture.

Chapman holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, San Diego, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Southern Methodist University. Her work has been included in exhibitions, screenings, performances, and publications, nationally and internationally, in venues including the Feminist Center for Creative Work (Los Angeles), the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), Nightingale Cinema (Chicago), Altes Finanzamt (Berlin), and CURA. Magazine (Rome).

She currently teaches writing in the Dimensions of Culture Program, Film Studies at the University of San Diego, Art History at San Diego State University, and serves as a contributing editor for HereIn Journal (San Diego).

Mrs. Harpin earned her BA and MA in History from UC San Diego, focusing on social revolutions and history of the Diaspora.  (In the Schedule of Classes, Mrs. Harpin is listed as "Natalye Pass.")  She has taught DOC 100D since Winter Quarter 2016.  This upper-division class is designed for Thurgood Marshall College transfer students, as well as juniors and seniors from the other seven colleges. 

Passionate about history, Natalye Harpin is compelled to showing connections between past history and current events. Natalye Harpin is a lifelong learner, and believes that when you get information, you have an obligation to share it. Her DOC 100D course is student-driven, and focuses on critical analysis of the contradictions of the promises given throughout American history, and the lies of colonial imperialism that are still perpetuated today. As someone who never felt represented in traditional history classes, she frames her classes to be as inclusive as possible, and to examine shared experiences of people in the western hemisphere. Natalye Harpin also teaches at the community college level, and was a transfer student herself when she came to UC San Diego for her BA. She is active in her community, and works at establishing solidarity with other communities by learning about their unique struggle. In her spare time, Natalye is an avid crafter, travels, and loves to try new recipes.