About the Contributors
Dr. Zakiya R. Adair is an assistant professor in the Departments of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies and African American Studies at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). Her areas of specialization are 19th and 20th women's cultural history specifically black transatlantic performance. Adair is the recipient of many fellowships including a National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Adair has published scholarly articles and edited book chapters on a range of diverse subjects that include black expressive performance, black internationalism, neoliberalism in academia and the impact of alt-right ideology on people of color in academia. Adair is working on completing her first book monograph, which explores the interconnections between nation, gender, and race in black women’s transatlantic expressive performance during the early part of the twentieth century.
Linda Bond is currently a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center and on the faculty of the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. She completed her MFA at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and is a former Fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In 2017 she was awarded grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Puffin Foundation. Her recent solo exhibitions include a 2017 show at the Human Rights Institute Gallery, Kean University and those at Brandeis University, Simmons College, Southern New Hampshire University and Available Potential Enterprises. In addition, her work has been exhibited at venues throughout the Northeast, including the MFA in Boston, the Brattleboro Museum, the Art Complex Museum, the Fitchburg Art Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery and is in numerous public and private collections. She is the recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Artists Resource Trust, the Massachusetts Foundation for Humanities & Public Policy, and from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. In 2014 she was invited to join the Feminist Art Base by the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.
Janet Braun-Reinitz is a painter, muralist and activist. Since 1984 she has collaborated in painting more than 50 community murals in NYC, elsewhere in the USA, and in seven international locations. Her work has been widely exhibited. Her art installation, “Ladies Who Go There,” was featured at the University of South Dakota (2018) and at Fabulon in Charleston, South Carolina (2017). A recent solo exhibition, “Troubled Waters,” was held at Spazio Bocciofila in Venice, Italy (2016). Her studio work is in collections as diverse as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame/ Museum, Oakland Museum of CA, Bristol-Myers Corporation, PAD/D Archives, and MOMA. In addition, she has been the recipient of “Anonymous,” a grant for the creation of political art (2014 and 2009), as well as other grants and prizes. Her mural work has been chronicled in several documentary films including Beyond the Walls (2014), La Grande Jatte in Harlem (2013), and The Women of Nostrand and Greene (2006).
Dr. Kristina Fennelly is an assistant professor of English at Kutztown University. Her teaching and research interests center on non-adversarial approaches to argument. She is also an active member of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Kutztown where she teaches WGSS courses for students working towards the minor. With the support of a university grant, Dr. Fennelly is currently working to assess and revise the goals and objectives of the program. She currently serves as secretary on the Executive Board of the PASSHE Women's Consortium.
Judith Jackson-Pomeroy, Ph.D. is a scholar of feminist theory & women’s studies and collaborates with the Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research initiative at Wellesley Centers for Women. Dr. Pomeroy began her research work on sexual violence against women in 1989 at the Family Research Laboratory/University of New Hampshire, where she worked on several projects with Dr. Linda Williams until 1994, and earned her Ph.D. there in 1998. She has been teaching theory and women’s studies at various universities since that time, and was chair of the Women’s Studies Program at California Lutheran University from 1999-2002. Dr. Pomeroy has presented widely at professional conferences, and her work appears in books and professional journals.
Chaitanya Lakkimsett is an assistant professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, sexuality, law and globalization. Dr. Lakkimsetti examines the transformation of state institutions and legal discourses around sexual and gender minorities in India, and the linkages between intimate labor and global capital. Her work appeared in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Sexualities, positions: asia critique, and Qualitative Sociology.
LaShawnda Lindsay-Dennis, Ph.D. is a research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), Wellesley College. She has conducted cross sectional and mixed methods research focused on the psychosocial development and functioning of Black girls and young women for the past 10 years. Her research has created a platform that sheds light on the social determinants, racial injustices, and cultural biases that burden the progression and viability of Black girls and women. She uses her research as an impetus to develop and implement culturally responsive mentoring initiatives for this population. Dr. Lindsay-Dennis, a formally trained African-centered educational psychologist, mental health counselor, and social scientist, is the progenitor of the Black Girls Create project, a culturally response STEM program for girls.
Katrina Majkut, a visual artist and writer, is dedicated to understanding how social traditions impact civil rights. She was listed as one of four international artists starting a new chapter in feminist art by Mic Media and as a must-see artist by Hyperallergic magazine. Majkut specializes in feminism and Western wedding traditions, which are addressed in her nonfiction book, The Adventures and Discoveries of a Feminist Bride (Black Rose Writing). She was recently accepted as a fall 2019 fellow to the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program at the Bronx Museum. She also recently did an instagram art takeover for Planned Parenthood, exhibited at Spring Break, A.I.R. Gallery, Victori + Mo Gallery, CUNY College of Staten Island, Babson College, the Mint Museum, and was an artist in residence at MASS MoCA. Her art catalogue is in the library at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, D.C. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Farmington, NM-based Latina artist, Rosemary Meza-DesPlas is known for exploring gender, sexuality, and identity issues through hand-sewn human hair drawings, watercolors and on-site drawing installations. She received an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (Hoffberger School of Painting) and a BFA from The University of North Texas. Ms. Meza-DesPlas has been sewing with her own hair since 2000. Her decision to collect and sort hair to utilize as a vehicle for making art is informed by socio-cultural symbolism, feminism, body image, and religious symbolism. An article on her hand-sewn human hair drawings was featured in the Huffington Post Arts & Culture section in 2015. Meza-DesPlas’ most recent drawings incorporate her gray hair.
Vanita Reddy is a feminist scholar and cultural theorist whose research focuses on the intersections of race, sexuality, and gender in global contexts. She is an associate professor of English at Texas A&M University with a faculty affiliation in Women’s and Gender Studies and the Race and Ethnic Studies Institute. Dr. Reddy’s research focuses on contemporary South Asian diasporic literature and culture, examining practices of cultural identity, belonging, and political community within the South Asian American and the global South Asian diaspora. It seeks to make visible subjects and populations who have occupied a historically marginal place within studies of diaspora and globalization, such as women, girls, service sector workers, undocumented migrants, and sexual minorities.
Eva Velasco is an interdisciplinary artist concerned with social justice and using art to process trauma. She holds a MFA from the City College of New York and an MA in Television and Film Theory from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her artwork has been exhibited in the Compton-Goethals Gallery and Andrew Edlin Gallery.
Dr. Michelle Warren is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. The questions that drive Prof. Warren’s work are those that underpin issues of human rights and identity, including the intersection of ethnic, national, gender, and racial identities. While her work has taken on these issues as they are iterated through theatrical, comedic, and cinematic performance, a recent collaborative project in oral histories dealing with Latinx immigration to the Central Plains of Nebraska has become a sequel. Those interests also inform her teaching and service. Her classes always include an acute acknowledgement of the sociopolitical machinations that control cultural narratives, from undergraduate levels through graduate courses. Her work in public humanities has served her community, both university- and city-wide, by bringing 18 international films to Central Nebraska over the last 6 years, facilitating discussions surrounding those films, curating Latinx performance at the local museum, and inviting Latino-US speakers to take part in campus events.
Linda M. Williams, Ph.D. is the director of the Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research (JGBVR) initiative at Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), Wellesley College. She has conducted research on consequences and memory of sexual assault, violence against women, and the commercial sexual exploitation of children for the past 45 years. The focus of her current research is on justice system responses to sexual violence and child sexual abuse, investigation and adjudication of campus sexual assault, and domestic sex trafficking of adolescents. She is a senior research scientist and Susan McGee Bailey Research Scholar at WCW and professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She is the author of four books and many scholarly publications, and has been principal investigator on 17 U.S. federally funded research projects. Her work focuses on building partnerships with community organizations, governmental and non-governmental organizations, international colleagues, and others to promote social change and integrate research findings into policy and planning for violence prevention.
