Kamala Kempadoo, York University, CA

Kamala Kempadoo is Professor of Sociology and Interim Director of the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought at the School of Women's Studies at York University in Toronto.

She specializes in transnational and Caribbean feminisms; sex work and sexual-economic relations; the global trafficking of persons; and intersections of race, gender and class.
Kempadoo is author of Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights (Paradigm, 2005). Trafficking and prostitution are widely believed to be synonymous, and to be leading international crimes. This collection argues against such sensationalism and advances carefully considered and grounded alternatives for understanding transnational migrations, forced labor, sex work, and livelihood strategies under new forms of globalization. From their long-term engagements as anti-trafficking advocates, the authors unpack the contemporary international debate on trafficking. They maintain that rather than a new ‘white slave trade, ‘ we are witnessing today, more broadly, an increase in the violation of the rights of freedom of movement, decent employment, and social and economic security. Critical examinations of state anti-trafficking interventions, including the US-led War on Trafficking, also reveal links to a broader attack on undocumented migrants, tribal and aboriginal peoples, poor women, men and children, and sex workers.

An earlier publication, Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race and Sexual Labor (Routledge, 2004), illuminates intersections of gender, sexuality, work, race and economic relations in the Caribbean, with a central focus on the social construction of prostitution and other types of transactional sexual relations that many women, and increasingly more young men, are engaged in. Sex tourism, migrant sex work, HIV/AIDS, and legalized prostitution are topics that are examined alongside sex workers agency, resistance and organization. The book challenges conceptions of prostitution as, exclusively, a form of violence to women, and argues that sexual-economic relations can be sites of both oppression and liberation.

Kempadoo has a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Amsterdam, and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado.

Alicia Arrizón, University of California, Riverside

Alicia Arrizón is Professor and Chair in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Women’s Studies, at the University of California, Riverside. She was awarded a Residence Fellowship at the UCHRI: University of California Humanities Research Institute (UC Irvine, January- June 2004).

Her book Latina Performance: Traversing the Stage, (Indiana University Press, 1999) was selected as one of ten “Outstanding Academic Titles” by Choice in 2000.
Her research includes Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies, Feminist Theory; Chicana(o) Latin American/U.S. Latino Literatures and Cultures; Ethnicity, Race, Gender, and Sexualities.

Her recent publication, Queering Mestizaje: Transculturation and Performance (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2006), employs theories of postcolonial cultural studies (including performance studies, queer and feminist theory) to examine the notion of mestizaje—the mixing of races, and specifically indigenous peoples with European colonizers—and how this phenomenon manifests itself in three geographically diverse spaces: the U.S., Latin America, and the Philippines. Arrizón argues that as an imaginary site for racialized, gendered, and sexualized identities, mestizaje raises questions about historical transformation and cultural memory across Spanish postcolonial sites.

Latina Performance: Traversing the Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), examines the Latina subject whose work as dramatist, actress, theorist, and/or critic further defines the field of theatre and performance in the United States. Arrizón looks at the cultural politics that flows from the intersection of gender, ethnicity, race, class, and sexuality.

Other Publications include: “Performance Art and Theater,” in Latino and Latina Writers, Vol. 1, Alan West-Durán, editor (Farmington Hills: The Gale Group, 2004), pp. 81-100;
“Race-ing Performativity through Transculturation, Taste and the Mulata Body,” Theatre Research International Vol. 27, N. 2 (July 2002), pp. 136-152; and “Mythical Performativity: Relocating Aztlán in Chicana Feminist Productions,” Theatre Journal, Vol. 52, No. 1 (March 2000), pp. 23-49.