Contributing Authors
christina baker is an assistant professor of American multicultural studies at Sonoma State University. She earned her PhD in the field of sociology from University of California, Irvine, and has published in the areas of race and ethnicity, gender, education, and media representation.
juan battle is a professor of sociology, public health, and urban education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is also the coordinator of the Africana Studies Certificate Program. With over sixty grants and publications—including books, book chapters, academic articles, and encyclopedia entries—his research focuses on race, sexuality, and social justice. Among his current projects, he is heading the Social Justice Sexuality initiative—a project exploring the lived experiences of black, Latina/o, and Asian lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the United States and Puerto Rico.
crystal boson is an assistant professor at Oregon State University in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research interests include hoodoo, Afro-diasporic religions, black queer studies, performance theory, and popular [End Page 113] culture studies. She received her doctorate from the University of Kansas in the Department of American Studies in 2014.
jessie daniels (PhD, sociology, University of Texas-Austin), is professor of public health, sociology, and critical psychology at the City University of New York (CUNY). She is the author of several books and dozens of articles, and coauthor of a policy report, “A Vision of Inclusion: An LGBT Broadband Future” (with Mary L. Gray), which offers guidance on Internet policy, health, education, and social well-being for LGBT people.
tina lee is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Stout, and the director of the Applied Social Science Program. She earned her PhD in anthropology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2009. Her research interests center around race, class, and gender stratification, and the role of state policies and practices in ameliorating and/or reproducing those inequalities. Her dissertation research examined the daily workings of the child welfare system in New York City, including how the concept of neglect was applied by officials and how parents navigated the system. She plans to complete follow-up research on issues of poverty and child welfare involvement in rural Wisconsin.
antonio (jay) pastrana jr. (apastrana@jjay.cuny.edu) is an assistant professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York (CUNY). His research interests are in sexualities, race, and social justice. Specifically, he examines how race-based marginalization and intersectionality issues affect the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people of color. He is co-principal investigator of the Social Justice Sexuality Project. Some of his work has appeared in Sexuality Research & Social Policy; Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men; Race, Gender & Class; Journal of Family Issues; and forthcoming in Latino Studies.
tanya shields is an assistant professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. Dr. Shields’s first book, Bodies and Bones: Feminist Rehearsal and Imagining Caribbean Belonging, is forthcoming with the University of Virginia Press and examines the ways in which rehearsing historical events and archetypal characters shapes belonging to the region. Dr. Shields has been working with several Caribbean artists in an effort to engage in “real-time” conversations on change and rehearsal. She teaches classes on Caribbean women, the arts of activism, growing up as a girl globally, and the continuing influence of plantation economics and politics. Dr. Shields is a board member for the Maryland-based Carivision Community Theater, which seeks to use theater as space of exchange between Caribbean and U.S. theater audiences. [End Page 114]
