Luke Williams is a scholar, artist, organizer and critic of twentieth and twenty-first century Black performance and visual cultures. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at The University of Texas at Austin. In 2024, he earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University in Modern Thought & Literature. His written work includes Blood, Sweat, and Time: Emerging Perspectives on Mildred Howard and Adrian Burrell (2024), published by SmingSming Books, and several scholarly and public-facing articles.

Rinaldo Walcott Is Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies. He holds the Carl V. Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies. He is a writer and critic. His research is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, gender and sexuality with interests in nations, nationalisms, multiculturalism, policy and education broadly defined. As an interdisciplinary Black Studies scholar, Walcott has published in a wide range of venues on everything from literature to film, to theatre to music to policy.

Bryan Wagner is Professor in the English Department, Director of the Folklore Program, and Professor in the American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power after Slavery (2009); The Tar Baby: A Global History (2017); The Wild Tchoupitoulas (2019), and The Life and Legend of Bras-Coupé: The Fugitive Slave Who Fought the Law, Ruled the Swamp, Danced at Congo Square, Invented Jazz, and Died for Love (2019).

Tracey Mia Stewart received her Ph.D. (2021) and M.A. (2016) in Music from the University of Virginia, and her Bachelors of Music with a concentration in Music History from Howard University (2012). She joined the Swarthmore College Department of Music and Dance as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music in 2021 and was appointed Assistant Professor of Music in 2022. Tracey was born and raised in the New Cassel neighborhood of Westbury, New York.
 

Halimat Somotan is an Assistant Professor of African Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where she teaches courses on urban history, archival methods, West African history, and decolonization. A historian of twentieth-century Africa, her research focuses on decolonization, postcolonial rule, urban history, and women’s history.

Hermine Pinson is a professor of African American literature at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in anthologies such as Common Bonds and KenteCloth. Pinson is the author of three collections of poetry, Áshe, Mama Yetta and Other Poems, and Dolores is Blue/ Dolorez is Blues. She is also the author of a play, Walk Together, Children.

Ianna Hawkins Owen, he/none, is an advanced assistant professor in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley. Owen’s first monograph, Ordinary Failure: Diaspora’s Limits & Longings, is under contract with Duke University Press. Owen has held fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, & he recently received a Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Award to support his second book project, This Time Without Feeling: Reading Black Asexual Affects.

Janée A Moses is an Assistant Professor of English at The City College of New York, CUNY, and Director of BOMB Magazine's Oral History Project, specializing in African American literature, black expressive cultures, and oral history. Her current book project is an intertextual study of black women’s life writing and performances that combines extraordinary pursuits and ordinary experiences to highlight the fullness of their lives. Prior to these appointments, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia.

Rosemary Millar is an Associate Professor of Humanities, Literature and Writing in the Division of Liberal Arts. Her classes are interdisciplinary within a hybrid mode, blending different teaching styles (lecture, demonstrator, facilitator, student as teacher, group work, project-based and experiential learning) to respond to the needs of diverse learning. She uses this style to illuminate the significance of academics and the arts on each other.