Faculty

Leslie Simon, M.A.

Education

• M.A., University of California, Berkeley
• M.A., University of California, Los Angeles
• B.A., University of Michigan

Areas of Interest

• Literature
• Humanities
• Architecture
• Social Justice

Current Courses

• Humanities 25: Women in the Arts
• English 58A: Contemporary Women Writers and Poets
• IDST 54: The Politics of Sexual Violence
• IDST 55: Ending Sexual Violence: Peer Education
• IDST 70: Architecture and Diversity (women and architecture module)

Publications

• A Music I No Longer Heard: The Early Death of a Parent, Simon and Schuster, 1998
• Collisions and Transformations, Coffee House Press, 1992
• High Desire, Wingbow Press, 1983
• i rise/ you riz/ we born, Artaud's Elbow, 1981
• Jazz/ is for white girls, too, Poetry for the People, 1977
• The Caged Collective, coeditor, Aldebaran Review, 1978

• "Why Denzel Washington (not Tom Cruise) Is the New Paul Newman" Film Comment, March 1998
• "PC Backlash: A Woman's Story" CrossRoads, March 1994

• City Lights Review; Left Curve; A Formal Feeling Comes; Heresies; Practising Angels; The Berkeley Poetry Review; Bachy; Haight-Ashbury Literary Quarterly; Birthstone; Revue Two; Yellow Brick Road; The Children's News; Small Press Review; Poetry Flash; San Francisco Review of Books; Synapse

Awards and Achievements

• California Federation of Teachers Women in Education Award
• Judge, Loft Literary Center "Mentor Series Contest"
• Writer-in-Residence, Djerassi Foundation
• Phi Beta Kappa

Biography

Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Leslie Simon graduated from the University of Michigan in 1969 and moved to California to go to graduate school at U.C.L.A. where she received an M.A. in African Studies in 1970. In 1991, she received an M.A. in English from University of California, Berkeley. She started teaching "Poetry for the People," a course she designed, at City College of San Francisco in 1975. She has also taught in San Francisco State University in the Women's Studies department and at New College of California in the Poetics Program. Since 1994, she has been a full time instructor at City College, coordinating Project SURVIVE, the campus sexual violence prevention program, which she designed and launched in 1993. In 1994, she helped students establish the college Women's Resource Center, where she served as the faculty advisor until 2001. Currently, she is the chair of the Women's Studies department at City College. She is also the cofounder and director of Groundswell, a community design organization.