Education: 

• Chicana/o Studies and Women’s Studies, B.A., UC Santa Cruz
• Ethnic Studies, M.A., San Francisco State University
• Medical Sociology, Ph.D., UC San Francisco 

Research interest areas:

Violence, Medical Violence, Medicalization and Social Health Movements;
Border Violence, Cultures and Migration Studies; Decolonial Chicana, Indigenous and Women of Color Feminisms; Queer of Color and Two Spirit Studies;
Critical, Comparative and Transdsciplinary Race Studies;
Chican@/Latin@, Latin American, Decolonial and Zapatista Movements and Theories

Dr. Rojas grew up in the border cities Mexicali, Baja California and Calexico, California. Her roots trace to Nogales and Douglas, Arizona, as well as Guadalajara, Jalisco. Clarissa’s transdisciplinary scholarly and activist work explores the interrelatedness of myriad manifestations of violence and the possibilities for the transformation of violence. Her research and teaching center decolonial healing and the transformation of violence in the struggle for social and health justice. She co-founded INCITE! a nation-wide movement working to end violence against women, gender non-conforming, and trans people of color and our communities. Clarissa is an internationally published poet who believes in caracoles and trusts the creative spirit.

Selected Publications:

• Co-editor of Color of Violence: the INCITE Anthology (Duke Press) 
• Special Issue of Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order, “Community Accountability: Emerging Movements to Transform Violence,” Editors introduction: “Community Accountability: Emerging Movements to Transform Violence,”
• Focused Issue of Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, “Ending Heteropatriarchal Violence in Chicano Studies”
• “In Our Hands: Community Accountability as Pedagogical Strategy” (Social Justice Journal)
• “The Medicalization of Domestic Violence”
• “Resistance Acts Until We are Free: Transforming Heteropatriarchal Violence in/and Chicano Studies” Chicana/Latina Studies
•  “Morphing War into Magic: The Story of the Border Fence Mural, a Community Art Project in Calexico/Mexicali,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies special issue commemorating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera
• “Fighting Violence Against Women and the Fourth World War,” The Revolution will Not be Funded: The NonProfit Industrial Complex (South End Press)