Joshua Gamson

Joshua Gamson’s most recent book is Modern Families: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship (New York University, 2015). He is the author of three previous books: Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (California, 1994); Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago, 1998), winner of book awards from the Speech Communication Association and the American Sociological Association; and The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, The Music, The Seventies in San Francisco (Henry Holt/Picador, 2005), winner of the Stonewall Book Award, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, an Out magazine Top Ten book, an Entertainment Weekly "Must List" selection, and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Gamson’s work has been published in magazines such as The New York Times Magazine and The American Prospect. Gamson is Associate Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco, where he moved in 2002 after nine years on faculty at Yale University. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow (2009-10) and a Fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2015-16). He served on the Board of Directors of the National AIDS Memorial from 2018-2022. He lives in Oakland, California, with his spouse and their two daughters. He is currently researching the life of the late R&B star Teena Marie, for The Ballad of Teena Marie: Life, Music, and Soul Across the American Color Line, to be published in 2026 by 37 Ink Books/Simon & Schuster.