Allia Griffin
Allia Ida Griffin has been teaching at Santa Clara University since 2014. She earned her Ph.D. in Literature from UCSD and is an interdisciplinary teacher-scholar specializing in Literature, Performance, and Cultural Studies. Her areas of teaching include Race & Ethnicity, African American Studies, and MENA/SWANA Diaspora Studies. Her research examines how writers and artists resist state-sanctioned violence and erasure by working to document their own histories. Her writing has appeared in Lateral: Cultural Studies Association Journal and contemptorary.
Griffin is the recipient of the Brutocao Family Foundation Award for Curriculum Innovation, one of the highest teaching honors awarded, for her expertise in curriculum development and student engagement. In 2019, she received the inaugural Faculty Award for Inclusive Excellence by the Student Advisory Committee. She has also been twice named a Faculty Mentor for Distinguished First-Year Students and was featured in an op-ed written by her former students in The Santa Clara. In addition to being a core faculty member in the Department of Ethnic Studies, she has also been invited to teach in the Department of English and Department of Theatre & Dance as well as the University Honors Program.
In the 2023-2024 Academic Year, Griffin has been invited to curate the “Urgency of Now Speaker Series” for the Center for Arts and Humanities, where she also serves on the Faculty Advisory Council.
Beyond her work on campus, Griffin volunteers as an art teacher in a community-based art program for children and serves as a youth soccer coach.
Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Studies from UCSD
M.A. in English from California State University at Chico
B.A. in English from Santa Clara University
- In Memory of Morrison
- Race & Mass Incarceration
- Historical Fiction and Literary Resistance
- Introduction to MENA/SWANA Diaspora Studies
- African American Women Writers
- Iranian American Women Writers
- Arab American Women Writers