Anna Storti has recently accepted a position with Duke University in North Carolina as an assistant professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and the Asian American and Diaspora Studies program. Storti graduated from Cal Poly Pomona in 2013 with double degrees in business administration and gender, ethnicity, and multicultural studies. After completing her master’s degree, she went on to earn her doctorate degree from the University of Maryland.
“For someone trained in gender, sexuality and ethnic studies, it really is a dream job to land at Duke, where I’ll be contributing to gender, sexuality and feminist studies as well as the expanding program in Asian American and Diaspora Studies,” said Storti. “I credit so much of my work to my time at a Cal State University because of its rich history in ethnic studies and the Third World Liberation Front. As a student, much of my time was spent organizing with friends in the Queer People of Color Collective and Womxn’s Resource Center, mentoring high school students of color, speaking on panels with the Pride Center and performing spoken word at open mic night events. These spaces—both on campus and in Pomona—continue to inspire how I teach and conduct research; always with the aim to pursue liberation for all.”
Storti started at CPP as a civil engineering major. It wasn’t until she became an assistant manager at Yogurtland in Anaheim Hills that she decided to change her major from civil engineering to business administration and later a double major in gender, ethnicity, and multicultural studies.
“Working at Yogurtland and coaching basketball helped me realize how energized I become when working with others,” said Storti. “These jobs facilitated my transition from STEM to business, but it wasn’t until I started taking EWS classes that I came to embrace the humanities as my home. At that point, I knew I wanted to work in a field invested in making the world less harmful for marginalized communities. So, I minored in GEMS only to declare a double major soon after. I was hooked on cultural studies, queer theory and women of color feminism. They gave me hope and offered answers.”
As Storti makes her transition from her position as a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College to North Carolina, she is most excited about meeting her future students, engaging in research and being a part of a new community.
“Being faculty at Duke will allow me to continue to build upon the interdisciplinary topics I engage in my research and in the classroom. I can already foresee so many events and courses that I can offer. I’ve also been inspired and impressed with Duke’s Asian American Studies Working Group and the recent coalitional formation of MAST (Mobilizing Asian Students Together). I can’t wait to work with them,” she said. “In addition to joining Duke, I’m very excited to live in the city of Durham which houses so many leaders in the movement for abolition, transformative justice and mutual aid.”
Storti said she aims to have every student take at least one gender, sexuality, and feminist studies course and show them the meaningful possibilities that follow when they major in the program.
“As an educator, I really cherish the opportunity to teach and envision ways we can make the world less harmful and more collective,” she said. “One of my goals is to build and sustain Asian American Studies at Duke in a way that not only inspires a transnational engagement with race, gender and sexuality, but also helps us contend with and heal from the violences that take shape under racial capitalism and settler colonialism both in and beyond the United States.”
Storti will begin her new appointment this fall. In addition to teaching courses, she will also work on completing her first book project on the connections between racist sex and racial mixture in Asian American contemporary art and culture. She will also spend more time researching Asian American feminist theory, Filipina/x feminism, the issue of hybridity in queer theory and start her second book project on the materiality of vice and Asian American indulgence.
“When I took GEMS courses at CPP, they changed my life in ways I’m forever grateful for,” she said. “It was in the EWS classroom where my nascent interests in social justice were met by professors who were invested not only in the education of underrepresented students, but in our futures. While in the program, Dr. Anita Jain encouraged me to apply to the McNair program, and I eventually became a McNair scholar during the 2012-2013 academic year. Conducting undergraduate research alongside my stellar cohort brought me to imagine a future in research and teaching. I credit my work as an educator to my professors in EWS and my time with McNair.”