Heidi R. Lewis is the David and Lucile Packard Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College. She serves as President of the National Women's Studies Association (2023-25) and Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Bibliography in Women's & Gender Studies. Her research focuses on Black Feminisms, Hip Hop discourse, and Critical Media Studies, with a current project challenging narratives around Mumble Rap's authenticity. Lewis holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue University and has taught interdisciplinary courses including Hip Hop & Feminism and Critical Media Studies. Education: Ph.D., American Studies, Purdue University (2011) M.A., English Literature, Ohio University (2005) B.A., English Studies, Robert Morris University (2003) Research Interests: Lewis interrogates intersections of race, gender, and media through projects like her forthcoming book on Mumble Rap and a documentary on her experiences during the crack cocaine epidemic. She employs discourse analysis to challenge dominant narratives in Hip Hop and feminist theory, emphasizing marginalized voices and transnational collaborations. Service & Leadership: As Director of Feminist & Gender Studies, Lewis secured funding for new faculty lines, student programs, and community partnerships. Nationally, she co-created the #FemSTEMSymposium to bridge feminist inquiry and STEM fields. Her service prioritizes equity, including roles on promotion committees and external reviews for academic centers. Community Engagement: Lewis collaborates with organizations like the Kampagne für Opfer Rassistischer Polizeigewalt and the U.S. Olympic Committee. Her work extends beyond academia through public talks, media contributions, and initiatives like the Marsha P. Johnson Professorship.
Inés Valdez is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts & Sciences. Her research bridges critical race and feminist theory with analyses of migration, transnationalism, empire, and racial capitalism. She has held fellowships from the Humboldt Stiftung, Global Arts & Humanities Society of Fellows, and the Princeton University Center for Human Values. Her 2023 book Democracy and Empire rethinks popular sovereignty through the Black radical tradition, winning the T.V. Paul Best Book Award. Earlier work includes Transnational Cosmopolitanism (2019), which redefines cosmopolitanism through global structures of domination. Her scholarship critiques empire's entanglement with democratic systems, emphasizing ecological responsibility and transnational solidarity. Recent publications explore anti-imperial sovereignty, Du Bois's ecological critiques, and Latinx political thought. She has contributed to journals like Contemporary Political Theory and Review of Politics , and her blog post Undoing Empire's Hold on Democracy (2024) addresses contemporary political crises. Valdez co-authored influential articles on migration politics and Kantian philosophy's racial dimensions. Her work integrates political theory with anticolonial praxis, advocating for transformative frameworks that challenge global hierarchies. She advises on transnational solidarity strategies and serves as a leading voice in decolonial and critical race studies.
University of California , Santa Barbara (UCSB)United States
Utathya Chattopadhyaya is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in Modern South Asian and British Imperial History with intersecting interests in the Indian Ocean World, Global History, and Commodity History. His research combines critical materialist and anti-imperial frameworks to analyze colonial agrarian frontiers, intoxicant commodities, and social dynamics of caste, class, and gender. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses including commodity histories, South Asian public culture, and historical methods. Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2018) His recent publications focus on cannabis regulation, colonial political economy, and multispecies entanglements in imperial contexts. He has received prestigious fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, UC Humanities Division, and the Mellon Foundation. Chattopadhyaya co-teaches interdisciplinary courses on topics such as race, colonialism, and cannabis history, contributing to emerging scholarship in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) and decolonial studies. Chattopadhyaya's research clusters around British imperialism's material impacts, particularly in eastern Bengal's agrarian transformations and intoxicant commodity systems. His work synthesizes historical methods with critical plant studies and gender analysis, producing innovative insights into colonial governance and resistance. He actively engages with graduate students in comparative history and Indian Ocean World studies. "Ganja and the Godhead" (2024) - Colonial cosmologies and cannabis "Colonial Capitalism" (2024) - Economic structures of empire "Bodies that Cohere" (2023) - Gender analysis in colonial contexts Key awards include the Margaret T. Getman Service to Students Award (2024), Regents Humanities Fellowship (2022-23), and ACLS Fellowship (2021-22). His scholarly activities intersect with research clusters in Science, Technology and Society; Race, Blackness and Abolition; and Global Antiquity.
Steven Rings serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Music and Director of Professional Development at the University of Chicago. His scholarship centers on popular music analysis, vocal studies, and transformational theory frameworks, with significant contributions to understanding Bob Dylan's work and Black experimental music traditions. Education: PhD in Music, Yale University (2006) Rings' research explores the intersection of musical cognition, cultural context, and performance practice. His work bridges theoretical musicology with vernacular traditions, examining vocal expression across genres from Dylan's protest songs to Albert Ayler's free jazz. Current projects investigate tonal hearing models and the relationship between song structures and recorded performances. His publications reveal consistent focus on analytical frameworks for popular music, particularly transformational approaches to vocal delivery and historical performance practices. Rings frequently connects technical music theory with broader cultural narratives, especially regarding racial identity in experimental music. Scientific Awards: 2014 Outstanding Publication Award (SMT Popular Music Interest Group) Society for Music Theory Award for 'Tonality and Transformation' Society for Music Theory Award for 'Oxford Handbook of Critical Concepts in Music Theory' Rings secured Mellon Foundation funding for a collaborative project with Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, reimagining musical categories of voice and groove. He chairs the University of Chicago Society of Fellows and co-founded City Elementary, a therapeutic school in Hyde Park. His teaching spans undergraduate theory courses, graduate seminars on Black experimental music, and College Core musical interpretation classes. Additional roles include series editor for Oxford Studies in Music Theory and former Professor of Guitar at Portugal's Conservatório Regional de Angra do Heroísmo, where he performed extensively as a classical guitarist prior to his music theory career.
Aida Levy-Hussen is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan's LSA (Literature, Science, and the Arts) College. Her research focuses on African American literature, trauma studies, gender and sexuality studies, and 20th-century American literature. She holds an A.B. from Harvard University (2003) and a Ph.D. from Emory University (2009). Levy-Hussen's work interrogates the intersections of race, memory, and cultural expression. She examines how African American writers engage with historical trauma, particularly slavery's legacies, and explores themes like boredom, affect, and narrative form in contemporary works. Her recent scholarship includes analyses of Ishmael Reed’s postmodern historiography and Spike Lee’s satirical film Bamboozled . She currently teaches courses on African American literature, Toni Morrison, and narrative theory. Her office is located in 3232 Angell Hall, with regular appointment-based office hours. No scientific awards are explicitly mentioned, but her prolific publication record reflects sustained academic impact in literary studies. Levy-Hussen’s writing emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches, blending literary criticism with cultural theory, psychoanalysis, and historical analysis. Her book How to Read African American Literature (2016) provides a transformative framework for interpreting post-civil rights fiction.
Sujatha Fernandes is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney, joining in 2016. Previously, she held positions at Queens College and the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, and was a Wilson-Cotsen Fellow at Princeton University. She earned a PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on social and labor movements, global Black cultures, migrant workers, and anti-Blackness in the Americas. She has authored six books, including The Cuban Hustle (2020) and Curated Stories (2017), and her work explores storytelling, climate justice, and marginalized communities. Dr. Fernandes has received grants such as the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project (2021) and contributed to initiatives like the Racial Justice and the Curriculum Project at the University of Sydney. She has been featured in global media, including The New York Times , NPR , and Orion Magazine . Her writing spans academic articles, creative nonfiction, and op-eds addressing climate displacement, migrant rights, and cultural policy. Notable works include analyses of Venezuela’s urban movements, Cuba’s cultural politics, and domestic worker advocacy. She sits on the editorial board of Transition: The Magazine of Africa and the Diaspora . Her interdisciplinary approach bridges sociology, anthropology, and literature, with ongoing projects in climate fiction and interlinked short stories.
Steven Lee is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, affiliated with the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He is a leading scholar in comparative ethnic studies, Soviet/post-Soviet studies, and 20th-21st century American literature, with a focus on transnational intellectual networks and revolutionary cultural movements. His work bridges Asian American, African American, and Slavic literary traditions while exploring intersections between global communism and cultural production. Lee’s research interests include the far left and far right ideologies in Northeast Asia during WWII, their influence on Asian American literature, and the role of manifestos as lived experiences. His current book project examines ideological imprints on Asian Anglophone writing. He is also affiliated with the Asian American Research Center, the Center for Korean Studies, and the Center for Race and Gender at Berkeley. His seminal work, The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution (2015), won the MLA’s Scaglione Prize, and he co-edited the award-winning Comintern Aesthetics (2020). Recent publications explore topics like Viktor Tsoi’s cultural impact, the Popular Front in Asian American writing, and transnational revolutionary manifestos. Lee’s research integrates methodologies from postcolonial theory, comparative literature, and political history. His sabbatical in AY 2024-25 focuses on finalizing his current manuscript while continuing to advise students through scheduled appointments.
Ana Paulina Lee is an Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Humanities in the Comparative Literature, English, and Creative Writing Department at the American University of Paris. She joined AUP in 2025 after teaching Latin American literature and culture at Columbia University for eight years and serving as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Tulane University. Her interdisciplinary scholarship bridges literature, history, law, and urban studies with particular focus on marginalized narratives in the Americas. Ph.D. from University of Southern California M.A. from New York University B.A. from Binghamton University Professor Lee's research examines how stories—archival, fictional, oral—shape legal imagination, social life, and urban experience in the Americas. She specializes in the intersections of magic, law, and literature in Latin America, with particular focus on Asian and African diasporas in Brazil. Her work traces how narrative functions as both historical record and catalyst for social transformation, exploring themes of slavery, emancipation, colonial legacies, and urban memory. She approaches these topics through interdisciplinary lenses combining literary analysis with histories of labor, migration, and performance. Lee's recent publications reveal a consistent focus on marginalized narratives and their impact on social structures. Her scholarship connects legal history with cultural production, showing how magical thinking and narrative practices shape urban spaces and social relations. Works like 'Urban Sorcery, Segregation, and Spectacle in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro' and 'Black Magic City' demonstrate her innovative approach to understanding the relationship between occult logics and legal frameworks in Brazilian contexts. Her research on diasporic communities, particularly Chinese and Japanese experiences in Latin America, contributes significantly to transnational and comparative race studies. David B. Larson Fellowship in Health and Spirituality, Kluge Center, United States Library of Congress (2025-2026) National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2025) Social Sciences Research Council, Inaugural Recipient of Interdisciplinary Projects in the Social Sciences (2020-2023) Institute for Ideas and Imagination Fellowship, Columbia University in Paris, France (2021-2022) Provost's Tsunoda Senior Fellowship, Visiting Scholar, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan (2019) Heyman Center Fellow, The Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University (2017-2018) Fulbright, Lisbon, Portugal (2013-2014) Professor Lee's scholarly activities have been generously supported by major research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences Research Council, and the Library of Congress. Her work demonstrates a commitment to interdisciplinary approaches that bridge humanities and social sciences, particularly through projects examining intersections of race, migration, and cultural production in the Americas. Her publication 'Socially Engaged Oral History Pedagogy Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic' indicates a strong commitment to innovative teaching methods and community-based research. While specific details about current advisees aren't provided, her research program suggests engagement with graduate students interested in diaspora studies, urban history, and literary-cultural analysis. Though not explicitly mentioned in the available information, Professor Lee's research on urban spaces, magic, and law in Brazil likely involves collaborative work with scholars across disciplines. Her participation in centers like the Institute for Ideas and Imagination at Columbia University suggests engagement with interdisciplinary research communities focused on global cultural production and social transformation. Her work contributes to ongoing conversations about how narrative practices shape legal frameworks and social structures in the Americas, particularly regarding racial formation and diasporic experiences.
George Palacios, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages at Clemson University's College of Arts and Humanities. His work focuses on racialization and multiculturalism in Latin American nation-states through an Afro-diasporic lens, examining socio-political mobilizations and cultural expressions reshaping identities across Latin America and the Global South. Education: Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Pittsburgh (2013); M.A. in Spanish from Purdue University (2004). Courses taught include Hispanic Literary Texts, Latin American Cultural Studies, and Spanish Language Immersion programs. Research Interests: Afro-Latin America, Colombian and Brazilian Literatures, US-Latin American Relations, and Global South Cultural Dynamics. He has published extensively on Afro-Colombian intellectual figures like Manuel Zapata Olivella, earning the 2021 Best Book Award from the Asociación de Colombianistas and the 2022 Clemson University Research Award. Articles and Books: His 2020 monograph Manuel Zapata Olivella (1920-2004) analyzes Zapata Olivella's radical political thought. Recent works critique mestizaje narratives and explore Blackness in colonial contexts. Articles appear in Revista de Estudios Colombianos , PALARA , and Escritos . Awards: Recognized for scholarly excellence in Afro-Latin American studies, including awards highlighting his contributions to decolonial theory and cultural critique. Professional Activities: Maintains an active research profile via Google Scholar (FTvxUjgAAAAJ) and engages in international academic collaborations.
Brittnay Proctor-Habil is an Assistant Professor of Race and Media in the School of Media Studies at The New School. Her research focuses on performance, popular culture, and sound/visual culture at the intersection of blackness, gender, and sexuality. She authored Minnie Riperton’s Come to My Garden (2022) and is currently working on two book projects: one tracing Black Southern migration to California through sound, and another analyzing funk music’s gender and sexuality discourses via LP records and CDs. Proctor-Habil holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and a B.A. from the University of California, Riverside. Her scholarly work spans platforms like Essence.com , Journal of Popular Music Studies , and ASAP/Journal . She teaches courses such as Black Feminist Media Methods and Blaxploitation Films , and supervises thesis projects. Her writing often intersects cultural critique, Black studies, and interdisciplinary methodologies.
Dr. George Allen O. Villanueva is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University, affiliated with the Race & Ethnic Studies Institute and Latinx/o/a & Mexican American Studies programs. His research focuses on how marginalized communities of color navigate structural oppression through communication, media, activism, and expressive culture. His interdisciplinary work integrates critical theories from communication, anthropology, and sociology. Dr. Villanueva holds a PhD in Communication from the University of Southern California and has taught at Loyola University Chicago before joining Texas A&M. Education: B.A. in Black Studies and History (UC Santa Barbara), M.Sc. in Global Media and Communications (London School of Economics), and PhD in Communication (USC Annenberg School). Research Interests : Urban equity advocacy, communication infrastructure, critical hip hop pedagogy, anti-displacement strategies, and engaged scholarship. His methods emphasize participatory and autoethnographic approaches to address systemic inequities in cities. Notable projects include the Chinatown anti-displacement map and walking tour, the Hollywood Community Studio, and the Northeast Los Angeles Riverfront Collaborative. His 2022 book Promoting Urban Social Justice won the 2023 Jane Jacobs Book Award for its contribution to urban communication studies. Community Engagement : Over 20 years of experience in community organizing, urban planning, and social change advocacy, including roles in electoral politics and strategic communication consulting.
Yvon Wang is an Associate Professor at the Department of History , University of Toronto (St. George Campus), specializing in East Asian history with a focus on gender, sexuality, and everyday life. He coordinates the Chinese History Grad Group and directs the Faculty & Postdoc Writing Workshop . His research spans imperial to modern China, including material culture, suicide studies, and Cold War socio-political dynamics. PhD and MA from Stanford University AB from Princeton University Current projects include SSHRC-funded studies on suicide in Chinese history and global responses to the Sinosphere during the Great Leap Forward . His publications examine topics like pornography in modern China, masculinities in early People's Republic media, and legal constructions of sexuality in Beijing. Recent articles include: Gray Markets in the Great Leap (2022) exploring economic deviance in 1950s Shandong Everyday Lives in China's Cold War Military-Industrial Complex (2022) analyzing worker experiences in Shanghai Reinventing Licentiousness (2021) tracing pornography's historical trajectory Scientific honors include SSHRC-funded research projects . He maintains affiliations with the Department of East Asian Studies and teaches courses covering Chinese history from prehistory to the 21st century.
Dr. Grace D. Gipson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), where she has taught since 2020. Her work focuses on Black future feminism, exploring intersections of race, gender, and popular culture through comic books, Afrofuturism, and digital humanities. She holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, an M.A. from Georgia State University, and a B.A. from Clark Atlanta University. Previously, Gipson served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rochester’s Frederick Douglass Institute and a visiting lecturer at Georgia State University. Her research examines Black female identities in comics, online academic networks, and representations of race/gender in speculative fiction. Key projects include a forthcoming book analyzing Black female identities in comics fandom and a study on Black academic-popular networks. Her work appears in venues like AAIHS/Black Perspectives and edited volumes on Afrofuturism. Gipson actively engages with communities through projects like the #BlackComicsChat podcast, advocating for inclusive representation in media. Her scholarship bridges academia and pop culture, emphasizing marginalized voices in creative industries.
David Kazanjian is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts & Sciences. He serves as Graduate Chair for the Comparative Literature and Literary Theory program (2024-25, 2026-2028), and has held prestigious fellowships including the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, 2026), Vartan Gregorian Center (NYPL, 2025), and Berlin Prize. His scholarship bridges transnational American studies, Armenian diaspora studies, political philosophy, and postcolonial theory. PhD in Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley M.A. in Critical Theory, University of Sussex B.A. in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University Kazanjian's research examines dispossession through legal archives, transnational Armenian cultural politics, and 19th-century social movements. His work spans early American literature, Latin American colonialism, trauma theory, and Marxist analysis of freedom discourses. Recent publications address dispossession in colonial New England/Yucatán, Armenian diaspora representation, and improvisational freedom practices in the Atlantic world. His editorial roles include co-editing NYU Press's America and the Long 19th Century series and Social Text journal. 2022 Penn Provost's Award for Outstanding Mentorship of Ph.D. Students Berlin Prize, American Academy of Berlin As co-director of the Tepoztlán Institute for Transnational History of the Americas (2017-19) and affiliations with Penn's Gender & Sexuality Studies, Latin American Studies, and Middle East Center, Kazanjian fosters interdisciplinary scholarship. He teaches courses on capitalism theories, early American literature, and critical theory. His lab and collective work includes the Tepoztlán Institute and Social Text editorial collective, focusing on transnational historical methods and diasporic cultural analysis.
Brandon J. Manning, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Texas Christian University's AddRan College of Liberal Arts . His work critically examines intersections of African American literature, gender and sexuality studies, and popular culture through the lens of satire and humor analysis.
