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VALERIE ROSE KELCO

Valerie Rose Kelco is a Ph.D. student, teaching assistant, research assistant, and graduate assistant for the English department at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Her research concentration is African American literature with a focus on southern women’s writing engaging with the body and the environment. Her digital skills and interests intersect with her research and inspire her projects and pedagogy. Recent fellowship and institute opportunities with the National Endowment for the Humanities "Hurston on the Horizon" Summer Institute-2021, the National Humanities Center Graduate Student Summer Residency-2019, and the University of Pennsylvania Summer DReAM Lab-2019 (Digital Resources and Methods) provided training and experience with Arc-GIS spatial mapping technology and augmented reality applications to digitally enhance her scholarly work and pedagogy by creating digital open educational resources.
SONDRA BICKHAM WASHINGTON

Sondra Bickham Washington, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of American Literature at Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University. She specializes in 19th and 20th century African American literature, particularly focusing on literary treatments of black girlhood and the ways that race, gender, and trauma affect African American female children and adolescent characters. Washington also founded The Black Girlhood Project, a digital humanities resource designed to enhance the emerging interdisciplinary field of black girlhood studies and to offer scholars and researchers a centralized location for networking and information on black girls. 
Sherry Johnson

Sherry Johnson tells stories that engage memory and Black writing between Canada and the United States. She is a writer, researcher, and scholar of literature, particularly at the intersection of Black women's lives and their writing, African American visual culture, and the digital humanities. An associate professor and a graduate program administrator, Dr. Johnson teaches courses in African American literature, Multicultural American literature, neo-slave narratives, and critical approaches to literary study.
ROCHELLE SPENCER

Rochelle is author of AfroSurrealism: The African Diaspora's Surrealist Fiction (Routledge 2019)  and The Rat People (The Fantasist 2017), and co-editor, with Jina Ortiz, of All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color (University of Wisconsin 2014).  A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears in The Crab Creek Review, The Believer, TriQuarterly, Callaloo, the African American Review, Solstice, Poets and Writers, Lithub, The Jamaican Observer, The Carbon Culture Review, The East Bay Review, Eleven Eleven, Ms., Mosaic, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Hip Hop, The Millions, Graveyard Shift Sisters, Terrain, and Art Practical. Rochelle is an alum of the Clarion West Workshop taught by K. Tempest Bradford and Nisi Shawl and a National Black Writers Conference workshop taught by Victor LaValle, and her curatorial work includes the NEA-funded Let’s Play exhibition and the Digital Literature Garden. Co-founder of AWAKE Literary Management and a founding member of the AfroSurreal Writers Workshop, Rochelle is a former board member of the Hurston Wright Foundation, a former Vermont Studio Center fellow, and a current member of the National Book Critics Circle and The Clearing, the collective founded by Serena Simpson. Writers interested in representation or collaboration can connect at writecreateimagine@gmail.com.
Michelle Gibbs

Dr. Michelle Cowin Gibbs, Ph.D., M.F.A., is an assistant professor and head of the B.A. program in Theatre Arts at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, IL. Her scholarly research interests include a spectrum of interdisciplinary studies in Black theatre and dance studies and solo autoethnographic performance. Michelle has publications in the Black Theatre Review; the Journal of American Drama and Theatre; Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies; and book chapters in Impacting Theatre Audiences: Methods for Studying Change (Routledge 2022); Hurston in Context (forthcoming Routledge 2023); and Enveloping Worlds (forthcoming 2023). As a Zora Neale Hurston scholar, Michelle is interested in tracing the relationship between Hurston’s work as an anthropologist, ethnographer, and playwright. Her current work is a digital project that cross-references Hurston’s play text, personal narratives, anthropology, and ethnographic works to examine perceptions of early twentieth-century Black women identities.
MARINA DEL SOL

Marina del Sol is a Master Instructor in the English Department at Howard University. She received a Ph.D. in Folklore and Anthropology from the Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies at The University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in interdisciplinary studies from the University of California at Berkeley.  As a digital humanities scholar, Dr. del Sol’s work focuses on citizenship in the public sphere.  During the spring of 2021, she served as an Expert Specialist for “Ensuring Scholarly Access to Digital Records,” hosted by Virginia Tech and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).  Her current project, “Zora Neale Hurston:  A Pre-Research Guide,” focuses on archival research, cultural documentation, and ethnographic writing.
M’BALIA THOMAS

M’Balia Thomas is Assistant Professor at the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Kansas. She is an Applied Linguist and TESOL teacher educator. She writes on the everyday creativity of non-native and non-standard varieties of American English.
Lavonda Broadnax

Lavonda Kay Broadnax’s primary research interest is the diverse set of literature written by African American women who lived during the U.S. Civil War. Her initial compilation, of the online version of these works, was the catalyst for her to win the Zora Neale Hurston Award. This award is given by the American Library Association for leadership in promoting African-American literature. The compilation has been expanded and now resides on the Library of Congress website @ African American Women Authors of the Civil War Era: A Resource Guide. Ms. Broadnax was a successful participant of the Black Book Interactive Project's Scholars III (2022). She earned her B.A. from Oberlin College and her M.S.L.S. from Case Western Reserve University.
La Tanya L. Reese Rogers

La Tanya L. Reese Rogers, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Literature and drama and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Honors Program at Fisk University. She holds a doctorate degree in literature and drama from Howard University and two bachelor’s degrees from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, where she won the coveted Mellon Mays Fellowship. Dr. Rogers is a co-founder of the Edward Alexander Bouchét National Graduate Honor Society, which has chapters at Yale, Stanford, and other prominent universities across the nation. She is the faculty advisor to the 2022 Battle of the Brains national championship team from Fisk University where she is a faculty member in the English Discipline. In previous roles, La Tanya Rogers served as a Communications Coordinator for the financial firm, A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.; a translator for the United States Embassy in Madrid, Spain; an assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of the District of Columbia; and a performance-review board member at the US Department of State and the US Department of Commerce. She has led nearly 100 undergraduate students on study abroad tours to countries such as France, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, and Egypt. She has lived, researched, and worked in São Paulo, Brazil, and Madrid, Spain. She is a published author on subjects ranging from contemporary playwrights in the United States to economic racism in Brazil. During 2022, Dr. Rogers participated in the NEH-sponsored Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing Institute at Brown University. During that Institute, she resolved to collaborate with the Brown University Digital Publications team to increase the prestige and popularity of digital scholarship among university faculties. As a result, her latest article on dramatic literature has appeared in the Black Theatre Review (tBTR)—a national, refereed, digital journal. Moreover, she is a featured faculty member on a grant partnership that focuses on HBCU library involvement in digital scholarship. Dr. Rogers is currently working on a manuscript that outlines a theoretical trope in the plays written by Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. This manuscript is a digital publication with a print compendium.
Kole Odutola

My intellectual interest and practice span a range of interlocking disciplines. My first degree is in Botany with interest in ecology and genetics. Thereafter, I changed from the natural sciences to social sciences and finally to language teaching. My educational background also spans three continents; namely Africa, Europe and the Americas. Learning from these three continents has given me different resources from which to draw from. My teaching of Yoruba language is also enhanced because I am a native speaker of the language and a close watcher of its diverse cultures and modes of creative expressions.  My secondary interest is in the intersection of Yoruba language in a global world with media studies. In addition, my science background and expertise in media production (Radio, TV, and Moviemaking) play a role in how I present my materials in class. I am a storyteller who has been invited to different events as a performer and as a workshop participant. In effect, my areas of specialization include: language teaching (which I started from Rutgers University in 2001), media studies and media production (which has helped in the production of audiovisual materials).
KHIRSTEN L. SCOTT

Khirsten L. Scott is a community-driven educator who works across the disciplines of critical HBCU studies, rhetorical theory and writing studies, digital and Black studies, and critical pedagogy. She is currently working on her first book and related digital projects which explores Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and their survival within US Higher Education. Learn more here: www.khirstenlscott.com
Kandice Fowlkes

Felicitations! My name is Kandice Rainn Fowlkes and I hail from Decatur, Georgia. I have always aspired to be a writer and work in education since I was a child sitting at my desk, critiquing a teacher's approach to how they could creatively engage a child's mind in learning. From volunteering in local schools, to helping fracture the canon of young men and women in my community --I have always sought out various opportunities to aid people in reaching new educational goals that they did not even think could be exceeded, whether it be adolescent or adult education. I wish to one day open my own school where I incorporate Montessori teaching philosophy with altered public school pedagogy, in order to offer an alternative, yet fruitful, teaching method to low-income communities.
Jenny Factor

Jenny Factor is a Lecturer in Poetry/Creative Writing at Caltech and doctoral candidate in English at Brandeis University. As a 2023-2024 Publication Scholar, Jenny is exploring the possibilities of a sample DH project centered around an alternative archive of the circulated manuscript- and periodical-versions of Phillis Wheatley Peters’s poems, mapped, recorded, or otherwise re-rendered into local and familial contexts. Jenny has benefited from a number of Brandeis University’s recent humanities initiatives including a 2022-2023 Race and Literary Studies graduate fellowship and a 2022 sponsored internship with the Lady’s Museum project. Her first book of poems was a finalist for a Lambda Literary award. Jenny’s poetry and blogposts are available @ Jenny Factor – Poetry, Craft Work, Audio.
Jada Bradley

Jada Bradley has earned a BA from Spelman College and an MA in Spanish Translation from Rutgers University. She has worked as a writer and editor in trade and educational publishing for over two decades. Jada's passions include children's literature, language acquisition, and amplifying the voices of underserved communities.  As Senior Editor of Culturally Responsive Education for Westchester Education Services, Jada helps create and edit culturally relevant educational projects that connect with students and offer opportunities for differentiation. 
JACINTA R. SAFFOLD

Jacinta R. Saffold is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Orleans and a digital archivist. She researches 20th and 21st century African American literature, Hip Hop Studies, and the Digital Humanities. Currently, she is working on her first manuscript, Books & Beats: The Cultural Kinship of Street Lit and Hip Hop and the Essence Book Project, a computational collection of popular African American Literature. Saffold’s work has been published in the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the U.S. Journal, Black Perspectives, Cultural Front, and Bloomsbury’s #MeToo and Literary Studies Reading, Writing, and Teaching about Sexual Violence and Rape Culture.
Hai In Jo

Hai In (HEH-in) Jo is a third year Ph.D student in English at Texas A&M. Her primary research interests are African American literature, 19th-20th century American literature, and digital humanities, with a focus on slavery and archive of slavery. She is at a very early stage of her dissertation that reads how African American literature offers ways of creating, collecting, presenting, and reading racial data in an ethical way by looking at the scenes of Black lives being represented as mathematical equations, objects, and data. As an international student from South Korea working on digital projects that deal with enslaved Black people in America as well as the Cherokee nation, she is constantly pondering upon her situational position.
Griselda Thomas

Griselda Thomas is a Professor of English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University. She currently teaches courses in African American literature and culture, Black feminist studies, and African & African Diaspora studies. Her Black feminist class “The Black Woman.” is currently participating in the Woman Leadership Virtual Exchange Program with the University of Hassan ll in Casablanca, Morocco sponsored by a Steven’s Initiative Grant. Her research and publications explore the politics of the Black female body, spirituality in the fiction of contemporary Black women writers, cultural influences in the Black community, and online pedagogy. One of her most recent publications is “A Small Piece of Blue Fabric: The Significance of Yemonja in Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata,” a chapter in Recovering the African Feminine Divine in Literature, the Arts, and Practice: Yemonja Awakening (Lexington Press, 2021). Her current research explores how the actions and writings of women motivated, resisted, and documented white race riots in Georgia and North Carolina. Dr. Thomas’ teaching, scholarship, and service are guided by her commitment to diversity and equity, interdisciplinary studies, and the intersectional inquiry of systems of oppression. She is committed to the mentoring and professional development of students living and working at the margins. In 2018, she was the recipient of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department’s Outstanding Diversity Advocate Award, the College of Humanities Social Sciences Outstanding Diversity Advocate Award, the Presidential Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity R.O.H. Social Justice Award, and the Kennesaw State University Diversity Advocate Award.
ELISEO JACOB

Eliseo Jacob has a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin with a background in Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Latin American literary and cultural productions. He currently is a lecturer of Brazilian literature and culture in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Howard University. His recent publications contextualize literary and cultural representations of São Paulo’s urban periphery as part of a larger analysis regarding the relationship of the public sphere to marginalized communities in urban spaces. His current book project, tentatively titled Literary Counterpublics in the Americas: Race, Space and Citizenship in São Paulo and New York, is a comparative study between the Literatura Periférica movement in São Paulo and the Afro-Latino literary scene in New York. He asserts that these writers’ fictional narratives reflect larger social trends in which historically disempowered populations create epistemological spaces that open up new routes not only for creative expression, but also for political mobilization.
CRYSTAL S. DONKOR

Crystal S. Donkor is an Assistant Professor of English, specializing in African American and Multicultural Literature at SUNY New Paltz. Her research interests are nineteenth and early twentieth century Black women’s literature, African American print culture, and the Digital Humanities. Her current book project, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy: The Pursuit of Pleasure in Black Women’s Literature, 1859-1910  studies pleasure at the intersection of African American women’s literature and African American print culture. Her next project, Black Literacies, is a digital humanities project and monograph that broadens definitions of African American literacy and citizenship in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
COCOA M. WILLIAMS

Cocoa M. Williams received her PhD in African American Literary and Cultural Studies with a minor concentration in American Modernism and Black Diasporic Modernisms at Florida State University. Her research interests include African American women’s literature, black modernity, modern African American art, black digital humanities, museum studies, black film studies, and folklore. Her dissertation project explores the impact of museum culture on African American arts and letters. She holds a B.A. in English (2005) and a B.A. in Philosophy (2005) from Valdosta State University, and she completed an M.A. in English at Clemson University in 2007. Cocoa Williams is the recipient of the J. Russell Reaver Award for Outstanding Dissertation in American Literature or Folklore, McKnight Dissertation Fellowship, P.E.O. Scholar Award, and the Ruth Yost Memorial Scholarship, among others. Dr. Williams is also a published poet. Her poetry has been published in Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Ninth Letter, College Language Association Journal, and december magazine.
Charity Clay

Dr. Charity Clay is a Critical Race Sociologist of the African Diaspora. She currently teaches in the sociology department at XULA (Xavier University of Louisiana), an HBCU in New Orleans. She is the head of the major concentration in crime and social Justice and her work centers around Pan-African liberation and resistance movements dating back to 17th century Marronage throughout the Americas and addressing current Anti Police-Terror Movements and those under the umbrella of #BlackLivesMatter in the United States and abroad. As an affiliated faculty member of the African American and Diaspora studies program at XULA, she has worked to develop study abroad opportunities for students throughout the African diaspora with centering around Afro-Indigeneity in the “Americas” and transatlantic Blackness outside of the United States. 
AMANDA BENNETT

Amanda Bennett is a Black feminist educator, consultant, and poet living in Durham, North Carolina, where she is currently a PhD candidate in Literature at Duke University. Her dissertation explores the existence of Black femme magic within 20th century Black women’s literary history. She is the founder of define&empower, a Black feminist education and consulting collective. Combining her academic knowledge of Black feminism, LGBTQ studies, and cultural studies, Amanda develops accessible public educational content on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and her podcast, Black Feminist Hotline. In her consulting work, Amanda is able to draw on this database of knowledge to host workshops, lead training sessions, conduct research for brands, and provide one on one leadership coaching sessions. You can find define&empower online at defineandempower.com and on Instagram and TikTok at @defineandempower.co.