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KYMBERLY KEETON University of North Texas

Kymberly Keeton is a native Texan, a nationally published writer, an art librarian & archivist, and genealogy curator. By day, the ALA Emerging Leader and Library Journal 2020 Mover & Shaker is the Chief Artistic Officer of NOVELLA MEDIA, LLC a creative information agency, and the Director of ART | library deco a virtual African American Art Library, Gallery, and Repository. Currently, the writer is pursuing a Ph.D. in Information Science, Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of North Texas. Her research interests are in African American Community Archives, Autoethnography, and Social Ecology. The creative interdisciplinary mixologist can be seen on the regular with her dog, Roxy Blue. And if nothing else, Keeton is always taking time to read books, write hooks, and design the next… Visit My Doctoral Blog  Participate: Dissertation Survey
KOLE ODUTOLA University of Florida

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 Kennesaw State University

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 Brandeis University

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 Westchester Education Services

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 Texas A&M

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 Kennesaw State University

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.