Kaila Adia Story, University of Louisville

Kaila Adia Story is an assistant professor and currently holds the Audre Lorde Chair in Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in the Departments of Women’s & Gender Studies & Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville. Her dissertation entitled: The Possessive Investment in Consumption: The Projected Image and Invention of the Black feminine Body utilized discourse analysis to deconstruct (European) Western sciences, cultural imagery, popular media and discourse, as it related to the examination of four separate but related figures-“the Hottentot Venus”-Sara Baartman, “The Black Venus”-Josephine Baker, “The Video Vixen”, and “The Black Queer and Sanitized Drag Queen.

While at U of L Dr. Story has created four new courses, Black Lesbian Lives, Introduction to LGBTQ Studies, Black Feminisms in Action, and Queer Perspectives in Literature and Media. Her essay “Performing Venus: From Hottentot to Video Vixen: The Historical Legacy of Black Female Body Commodification”, which is a small portion of her dissertation is published as a chapter in the anthology Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop & Feminism edited by Aisha S. Durham, Elaine Richardson, Rachel Raimist and Gwendolyn Pough. Finally, Dr. Story’s essay “There’s No Place like “Home”: Mining the Theoretical Terrain of Black Women’s Studies, Black Queer Studies and Black Studies” has just been published in the March 2008 Special Edition of the Journal of Pan-African Studies.

Melinda L. de Jesús, California College of the Arts

Melinda Luisa de Jesús is Associate Professor of Community Arts and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts where she writes and teaches about youth and popular culture, feminist/gender studies, and comparative American ethnic studies. She recently edited Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, the first anthology of Filipina/American feminisms (Routledge 2005). Her writing has appeared in Challenging Homphobia; The Lion and the Unicorn; Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism; Radical Teacher; MELUS Journal; The Children’s Literature Association Quarterly; The Journal of Asian American Studies; LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory; Works and Days; and Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth Century American Girls’ Culture. She is an Aquarian and admits an obsession with Hello Kitty.

Emi Koyama, Eminism.org

Emi Koyama is a multi-issue social justice slut who synthesizes feminist, Asian, survivor, dyke, queer, sex worker, slut, intersex, genderqueer and crip politics, as these factors, while not a complete descriptor of who she is, all impacted her life.

Emi is the director of Intersex Initiative Portland and the community board chair for Survivor Project. In addition to performing at the fifth annual Sex Workers’ Art Show in Olympia and other art shows, Emi produced the Northwest version of Intercourse: A Sex and Gender Spoken Word Recipe for Revolution and Sluts Against Rape: An Evening of Performances to Reclaim and Celebrate Our Bodies and Sexualities.

Emi is putting the “emi” back in feminism through her neurotically huge personal web site, Eminism.org