Travis Boyce

Travis Boyce

Chair, Department of African American Studies

travis.boyce@sjsu.edu


Dr. Travis D. Boyce is an associate professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at San José State University. His research examines a wide range of issues relating to the African American experience, including the history of American higher education, the Civil Rights Movement, the 20th century, sports activism, and fashion studies.

His works have appeared in academic and professional journals as well as edited collections. He is the author of Steady and Measured: Benner C. Turner, A Black College President in the Jim Crow South (The University of South Carolina Press, 2023) and co-editor of Historicizing Fear: Ignorance, Vilification, and Othering (University Press of Colorado, 2020).

Dr. Boyce serves on the editorial boards for the Fashion, Style, and Popular Culture Journal and The Journal of Popular Culture. Additionally he is a board member for the South Carolina Historical Association. 

Dr. Boyce is also a life member of various social and academic organizations. This includes Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.; the Association for the Study of African American Life and History; the National Council for Black Studies; the Association for Ethnic Studies; Popular Culture Association; and the Southern Historical Association. In addition, he serves as the Black/African American Studies area chair for the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association.  

A native of South Carolina, Dr. Boyce studied history at Claflin University, a private historically Black university in Orangeburg. He received an M.A. in history and a Ph.D. in cultural studies from Ohio University.

Dr. Boyce comes from a family legacy of civil rights activists in the American South. He is currently working on his next book project, a biography profiling his late grandfather - Mr. A.J. Whittenberg, Sr. (1913-2001), whose social activism led to the desegregation of public schools in Greenville, South Carolina.