Omise’eke Tinsley
Omise’eke Tinsley is Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Motivated by love for boundless black femme creativity, her research focuses on queer and feminist, Caribbean and African American performance and literature. She is currently completing a manuscript entitled The Color Pynk: Black Femme Art for Survival, which explores black femme aesthetics of resistance in the Trump era. Earlier monographs include Beyoncé in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism (2018), a black femme-inist reading of Beyoncé’s Lemonade; Ezili’s Mirrors: Black Queer Genders and the Work of the Imagination (2018), an exploration spirituality and sexuality in 21st century black queer literature, dance, music and film; and Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature (2010), a study of Caribbean women writers’ queer poetics of decolonization. Her articles appear in journals including GLQ, TSQ, Feminist Studies, Yale French Studies, and Small Axe. A former performer and collaborator with Ananya Dance Theatre, Dr. Tinsley is also a registered yoga instructor.
Joy James
Joy James is Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities at Williams College. She is the author of Resisting State Violence; Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics, Transcending the Talented Tenth and Seeking the Beloved Community. James has published numerous articles on: political theory, police, prison and slavery abolition; radicalizing feminisms; diasporic anti-black racism; and US politics; and writes on the Captive Maternal through the lens of “The Womb of Western Theory.” Creator of the digital Harriet Tubman Literary Circle at UT Austin https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/7828, James is editor of The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings; Imprisoned Intellectuals;Warfare in the American Homeland; The Angela Y. Davis Reader; and co-editor of the Black Feminist Reader. James’s most recent books include: In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love and New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the Afterlife of Erica Garner.