Presenter & Moderator Bios
Anjali Carroll is a PhD student in American and New England Studies at Boston University. She is interested in Latinx and South Asian American cultural production and the performance of ethnic identity, with a particular interest in theorizing brown identity and its political possibilities. She completed her undergraduate education at Brown University, where she studied Cuban literature and culture, urban anthropology, and architecture history. She has worked as a case manager at a transitional housing program, an administrative assistant at a civil rights organization, and a development assistant at Urbanity Dance in Boston’s South End. Anjali lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her spouse and plants.
Sargam Sharma is a first-year PhD student at the Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University. Her current research is focused on the understanding of death and the dying experience in "secular" and "religious contexts, such as the hospital or the crematorium, in the state of Bihar in India. For this paper Sargam is am drawing on my MPhil thesis where she wrote about how a language of 'pain' and care, rather than trauma can help us provide a more grounded explanatory model of what happens when someone experiences an act of sexual violence.
Shamiya Ford is a first year PhD student in the Department of English at Boston University. Prior to arriving at Boston University, she graduated with her B.A in English and a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Rider University. Shamiya is also an alumni of the McNair Scholars Program and Rutgers English Diversity Institute (REDI). Her interests include reading and writing about the experiences of women from the Black Diaspora, interrogating the role of religion and spirituality in the formation of these experiences, and evaluating Black women’s speculative and realistic fiction. While being a new graduate student does not afford her much time to work on larger projects, she is currently working towards a certificate in Women’s,Gender, and Sexuality Studies as well as curating a blog dedicated to uplifting the writing of diverse authors.
Reba Dickson was born and raised in Dennery, St. Lucia. She was first introduced to the indigenous and African “monster” during her Social- Studies class, where she was always conflicted with this categorization. She has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of the Virgin Islands and a Master of Arts from Florida Atlantic University, where among other things, she continued to explore the “monster” characterization of Les Damnés de la Terre. Currently, Reba is an English PhD student at Northeastern University where she serves as the Project Manager for the Early Caribbean Digital Archive (ECDA), Managing Editor for Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ), and a Coordinator for the Women of Color in the Academy (WOCIA).
Jay Andros (they/he) is a writer, educator, and scholar based in New York & California. They are an alum of San Francisco's Emergent Arts Professionals' fellowship and Mills College, where they studied Environmental Studies. They are currently pursuing an M.F.A. at New York University and working on a poetry collection entitled Strangers, Or People Without Context. Their research interests include digital humanities, cybernetics, critical theory, new media studies, 20th and 21st century American poetics, and poetry criticism. In their hometown of Washington, DC, they got exposed early to activism, a life-long pursuit. You can reach them at js12291@nyu.edu.
Hui Wei is a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis. Her research interests include aging, care, value theory, (fictive) kinship, senior communities, the supplements market, social transformation, and the cultural landscape of China and beyond. Having recently completed her two-year fieldwork in China, she is now engaged in dissertation writing.
Moderator Bios
Brandon Callender is an Assistant Professor of English at Brandeis University. Professor Callender is also affiliated with the departments of African and African American Studies, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He specializes in black and queer literature with a budding interest in board games and horror studies. He is interested in how black and queer writers, viewers, and players can find affirmation in subcultures, genres, and spaces that often fail to acknowledge them. His current book project, "The Charge of the Other in Black Gay Men’s Literatures" examines eccentric expressions of desire and belonging that test the limits of respectability and solidarity.
Faith Smith is a Professor in the departments of African and African American Studies, and English and American Literature, and the Latin American and Latino Studies, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and CAST Programs at Brandeis University. Her research interests are in the intellectual and cultural histories of the Caribbean and the African Diaspora, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Her essays on intellectual life, gender, sexuality and sovereignty include recent articles such as "Fabricating Intimacies: Artificial Silk and Cloth Wives in the Interwar Moment" (Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 12: 2018) and "Good Enough for Booker T to Kiss: Hampton, Tuskegee, and Caribbean Self-Fashioning" (Journal of Transnational American Studies 5, 1: 2013); the edited collection Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean (2011); and a forthcoming book entitled "Strolling Through the Ruins: The Caribbean's Non-Sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century."
Emilie Diouf is an Assistant Professor of English ar Brandeis University. Her research and teaching reflect her interdisciplinary background in African Literature, African American and African Studies, as well as Women’s and Gender Studies. She is interested in the relationship between narrative, migration, trauma, and human rights, expanding the field of trauma studies to include more substantially the voices of African women refugees. Since African women refugees trauma narratives represent subjectivities shattered by violence, they are imbricated into the socio-economic and political transits of cultural production, circulation, and reception. She uses trauma theory to explore the ways in which African women survivors of civil war and genocide narrate the large-scale violence inflicted upon them. Her research in African women’s literature forms a bridge to Francophone Caribbean Women's literature, and to black feminist theory. Comparisons of various women’s cultural productions across the African Diaspora enhance critical inquiry into systemic violence and the promotion of gender justice. Emilie is interested in diversifying the field of feminist studies through cross-cultural analysis that allows us to rethink new feminist paradigms that could take into consideration Black women’s unique conditions.
