Julius B. Fleming, Jr. earned a PhD in English, and a graduate certificate in Africana studies. Specializing in Afro-diasporic literatures and cultures, he has particular interests in performance studies, black political culture, diaspora, and colonialism, especially where they intersect with race, gender, and sexuality. Fleming is the author of Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation (NYU Press 2022). This book reconsiders the Civil Rights Movement from the perspective of black theatre. It argues that black theatrical performance—much like television and photography—was a vital technology of civil rights activism, and a crucial site of black artistic and cultural production.

Fleming’s work appears in journals like American Literature, American Literary History, South Atlantic Quarterly, Callaloo, and The James Baldwin Review. He has served as Associate Editor of both Callaloo and Black Perspectives, and now serves on the Editorial Board of Southern Cultures.

Professor Fleming is currently at work on two new book projects: one that explores the relationship between the speculative and the new geographies of empire and colonialism and the other that examines the history of black nightlife.

La Donna L. Forsgren is an Associate Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre with a joint appointment in the Department of Africana Studies. She is concurrent faculty in the Gender Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame. She serves as Editor for Theatre Survey.

Her first book, In Search of Our Warrior Mothers: Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement (Northwestern UP, 2018), investigates the works and careers of Black women playwrights: Martie Evans-Charles, J.e. Franklin, Sonia Sanchez, and Barbara Ann Teer. Her second book, Sistuhs in the Struggle: An Oral History of the Black Arts Movement Theatre and Performance (Northwestern UP, 2020), is a finalist for ATHE’s Outstanding Book Award (2021). Her current book project, Black Girlhood on the Musical Theatre Stage (under contract, Oxford UP), explores Black queer feminist spectatorship and representations of Black girlhood in contemporary musical theatre.

Dr. Forsgren considers raising five really awesome children her most outstanding achievement.

Jo-Ann Morgan is Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Art History at Western Illinois University. She authored The Black Arts Movement and the Black Panther Party in American Visual Culture (Routledge, 2019) and Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Visual Culture, winner of the Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship in 2008. Prior to becoming a scholar of African American art and culture, Morgan graduated from the University of Wyoming in studio art (MFA 1988) and remained active as a visual artist while a doctoral student at UCLA (PhD 1997). After two decades of university teaching, in 2020 Morgan reestablished a full-time studio practice, creating stitched fabric compositions on themes related to social justice and gun violence.

Morgan received a Not Real Art Award from Culver City Arts Foundation (2022), a Cultural Commentary/Social Change Grant from Fiber Art Now (2021), and numerous honorable mentions from juried shows. Her solo shows include Dalton Gallery, Rock Hill, SC (2022), Park Circle Gallery, North Charleston, SC (2022), Maude Kerns Art Center, Eugene, OR (2023), Rehoboth Beach [DE] Art League (2023), Pittsburg [KA] State University (2023), Alma [MI] College (2023), Thelma Sadoff Center for the Arts, Fond du Lac, WI (2024), Holy Family University, Philadelphia, PA (2024); and Appalachian Center for Crafts, Smithfield, TN (2024).

Courtney Thorsson teaches, studies, and writes about African American literature at the University of Oregon, where she is a Professor of English and a Faculty Fellow in the Clark Honors College. She is the author of Women’s Work: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women's Novels and essays in Callaloo, African American Review, MELUS, Gastronomica, Contemporary Literature, Legacy, and Public Books.

Courtney’s most recent book, The Sisterhood: How A Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture, tells the story of a community of Black women writers and intellectuals who transformed political, literary, and academic cultures. Read reviews of The Sisterhood in The Nation, the Times Literary Supplement, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, The Journal of American History, and Resources for Gender and Women's Studies: A Feminist Review

The Sisterhood was on the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize 2024 long list for nonfiction, received Honorable Mention for the 2024 William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association, was a 2025 Oregon Book Award finalist, and is a Literary Freedom Project One Book One Bronx selection for 2025.