Lyndsey P. Beutin is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Media Arts at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Her research focuses on the politics of the public memory of slavery and contemporary social movements. She is the author of Trafficking in Antiblackness: Modern-Day Slavery, White Indemnity, and Racial Justice (Duke University Press, 2023), which won the 2024 Emerging Scholar Book Award from the Canadian Communication Association and the 2024 Shepherd Book Prize in the Humanities from McMaster.

I help groups address complex public problems and conflicts in ways that strengthen communities and organizations when other forces are pushing them apart. After retiring from my salaried general faculty position in July 2025, I work part-time on a variety of collaborative change projects involving environment and land use, water, historic landscapes, community development, education, and health. 

At the heart of my work is a sustained inquiry into how individuals and communities make sense of their experiences within broader institutional and historical frameworks. I examine how people navigate systems and adapt to the conditions of their worlds. I ask how people create meaning that can be shared and transmitted to others. As a scholar-administrator, I am committed to making the academy a more equitable space for work and intellectual labor.

Lisa Woolfork is a scholar, sewist, podcaster, and community organizer whose work sits at the vibrant intersection of Black liberation, craft, and cultural studies. As an Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia, she has spent her career teaching and researching Black literary and cultural studies, with a focus on race, memory, and the ways Black women use art and storytelling to resist oppression and build community.

Francille Rusan Wilson is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at the University of Southern California. She is an intellectual and labor historian whose current research examines the intersections between black labor movements, black social scientists, and black women’s history during the Jim Crow era.

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.

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.