BCRW: The Barnard Center for Research on Women

About the Contributors

Sara Ahmed is Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her books include Queer Phenomenology: Orientation, Objects and Others (2006) and The Promise of Happiness (2010). She is currently completing a book entitled, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, and has started a new project on the will and willfulness.

Adrienne Maree Brown (www.adriennemareebrown.net) is an organizational healer, pleasure activist, facilitator, singer and artist living in Detroit. She was the executive director of The Ruckus Society from 2006-2010, and now sits on their board. She was also a National Co-Coordinator for the 2010 U.S. Social Forum and is currently helping with the transition phase of that work. Adrienne sits on the boards of Allied Media Projects, Third Wave Foundation, and Common Fire. A co-founder of the League of Pissed Off/Young Voters, Adrienne is obsessed with learning and developing models for action, community strength, movement building, and transformation.

brownfemipower is a writer, organizer, and border crossing mami. She has published her work in The Guardian, make/shift magazine, Global Comment, and Bitch, among others. She publishes a zine and blogs at Flip Flopping Joy.

Joy Castro (www.joycastro.com) is the Associate Director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies and an Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has taught in the Clemente Course, which offers a humanities curriculum to low-income adults, and has offered free courses to at-risk teenagers, victims of domestic violence, and survivors of sexual assault. Her memoir, The Truth Book, was named a Book Sense Notable Book by the American Booksellers Association, and her second book, Island of Bones, is forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press. She was named a 2009 Best New Latino Author.

Daniel Horowitz Garcia has 20 years of experience in activism and organizing. He has been a labor union organizer, community organizer, human rights educator, freelance writer, anti-racism facilitator, and popular educator in both paid and unpaid positions. Presently, Daniel is finishing a degree in history and planning on attending graduate school. In his spare time, he still believes the revolution is possible.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer black schoolteacher in Durham, NC. She is the instigator of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Multimedia Educational Movement , the creator of BrokenBeautiful Press, and the co-creator of the queer black intergenerational experiential archive MobileHomeComing Project. Alexis recently attained her PhD in English, African, and African American Studies from Duke University, and she is a proud Barnard College graduate!

Duchess Harris (www.duchessharris.com) is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Macalester College, author of Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton and co-editor (with Bruce D. Baum) of Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity. She will receive her J.D. from the William Mitchell College of Law on January 15, 2011. She was the first Editor-in-Chief of the William Mitchell Law Raza Journal.

Jessica Hoffmann (www.jessicahoffmann.com) is a coeditor/copublisher of make/shift magazine, a freelance writer and editor, and a community organizer/activist. She has contributed to numerous publications, including ColorLines, AlterNet, and the anthologies We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists and Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity. She blogs at The Bilerico Project and is active in local and national organizing around food, housing, and more. In 2008, Utne named her one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World."

Julie Kubala is Director of Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer in the Women's Studies Institute at Georgia State University. She is currently working on a project that investigates histories of queer and anti-racist activism in Atlanta to formulate new strategies of community formation within activism. She teaches courses on queer theory, Foucault, social class, and historical and theoretical perspectives on activism.

Nomy Lamm (www.nomylamm.com) is a writer, performer and voice teacher who lives in San Francisco. Her band, nomy lamm & THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, is a flexible platform for collaboration with everyone and everything. She works with Sins Invalid, a performance project that centralizes work by queers and people of color with disabilities and writes an advice column for make/shift magazine. She is currently a student in the MFA Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University.

Noemi Y. Molitor is currently pursuing her PhD in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University focusing on the interconnections of citizenship, nationalism, and racism in Germany and the U.S. In her teaching, she is committed to bringing social justice issues and power-conscious pedagogies to the classroom. She continues to be involved in political projects in Berlin, Germany that address the legacies of German colonialism, particularly in Berlin's cityscape today.

Jennifer C. Nash is Assistant Professor of American Studies at George Washington University. Her academic interests include black feminisms, black sexual politics, and the intersection of race, gender, and visual culture. Her articles have appeared in Social Text, Feminist Review, and various other academic journals, and she is currently completing a manuscript entitled, The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography.

Adele Nieves (www.adelenieves.com) is a Nuyorican who relocated to Detroit three years ago. She is a media activist, independent journalist/mixed media-maker, and Watsu (energy healing/bodywork in water) therapist-in-training. Most recently, she was the National Communications Coordinator for the 2010 US Social Forum. Adele was an editor for the southeast Michigan magazine collective Critical Moment, one of the core organizers for the SPEAK! Radical Women of Color Media Collective, is on advisory board of the Allied Media Conference and is on the board of East Michigan Environmental Action Council (EMEAC). She has worked with Essence, Life Magazine, and People En Español. Her writing has also appeared in ZNet, Bitch, make/shift, Left Turn, and B.L.A.C. Magazine, as well as in several anthologies and zines. Adele is passionate about working in non-traditional mediums because it is where she feels she can inspire the most change. She covers stories and issues often overlooked by the traditional media, as they are usually of the greatest consequence for the majority of people. Adele was Essence of Motown's "2007 Writer of the Year" for her continued hard work, literary creativity and her efforts to improve Michigan's literary community. In between her efforts at transforming media and building community-based support structures for mental health, disability and resource sharing, she can be found searching for a home-cooked Caribbean meal.

Lesleigh Owen recently earned her PhD in sociology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her academic research and teaching interests revolve around social identities and inequalities, media, and cultural narratives of diverse body types. Lesleigh is also a published poet; poetry aficionados and/or members of the fat pride communities can find more of her poetry in the 2009 anthology Fat Poets Speak: Voices of the Fat Poets' Society. Lesleigh is a social activist who spends her free time fighting for human and animal rights.

Cara Page, based in the South, is a Black Queer Feminist Artist, Organizer and Healer with the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective; a collective of grassroots healers building community responses to intervene on the impact of generational trauma and violence in our communities and movements. She also organizes with Project South, the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and is a co-trainer for the Southerners on New Ground (SONG) Organizing School. Her work is rooted in racial, economic, reproductive and environmental justice with a particular lens on anti-violence, anti-eugenics and building models of healing, safety and resiliency.

Marta Sanchez is a survivor, author, activist, and self-taught visual artist from Panama. A former rape crisis center advocate, she is a graduate of Spelman College (2000), and the University of Virginia School of Law (2005). Her artwork and presentations have been featured in Austria, Croatia, Honduras, Panama, Trinidad, and across the United States. As a dynamic international speaker, her creative activism provides a bridge between communities and support resources. To view more of her work visit www.poetryandart.org.

Lamont Sims is a student at Georgia State University studying sociology and women's studies. He is involved with queer feminist group Sweet Tea Southern Queer Men's Collective and BlackOut, a Black queer student organization that challenges all oppression.

Mandy Van Deven (www.mandyvandeven.com) is a progressive activist and independent writer. She is the Deputy Director of RightRides and the founding editor of Elevate Difference. Mandy co-authored the forthcoming Hey, Shorty!: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets, and her writing has been published in various online and print media—including AlterNet, Bitch, Change.org, ColorLines, Curve, Herizons, make/shift, Marie Claire, RH Reality Check, Religion Dispatches, SexIs, $pread, and The Women's International Perspective. Mandy has a Master's in Social Work from Hunter College with a concentration in Nonprofit Administration and Community Organizing. She has worked with grassroots nonprofits in Brooklyn, Atlanta, and Kolkata, including Girls for Gender Equity, Red Hook Initiative, YouthPride, and Blank Noise.