D R. M I M I T H I N G U Y E N
Mimi Thi Nguyen is Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Previously, she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Rackham School of Graduate Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She earned her PhD. in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with a Designated Emphasis on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her first book, The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages, focuses on the promise of “giving” freedom concurrent and contingent with waging war and its afterlife (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2012). She is also co-editor with Fiona I.B. Ngo and Mariam Lam of a special issue of positions: east asia cultures critique on Southeast Asians in diaspora (forthcoming).
With her second project on the obligations of beauty, she continues to pursue her scholarship through the frame of transnational feminist cultural studies, and in particular as an untangling of the liberal way of war that pledges “aid,” freedom, rights, movement, and other social goods. Nguyen is also co-editor with Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu of Alien Encounters: Pop Culture in Asian America (Duke University Press, 2007), and publishes on queer subcultures and punk feminisms. Nguyen has published zines since 1991, including the compilation zine ...Race Riot. She is a former Punk Planet columnist and a Maximumrocknroll worker, and her zine writing is archived at thread & circuits. She is also co-author of the research blog on dress and beauty threadbared.
With her second project on the obligations of beauty, she continues to pursue her scholarship through the frame of transnational feminist cultural studies, and in particular as an untangling of the liberal way of war that pledges “aid,” freedom, rights, movement, and other social goods. Nguyen is also co-editor with Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu of Alien Encounters: Pop Culture in Asian America (Duke University Press, 2007), and publishes on queer subcultures and punk feminisms. Nguyen has published zines since 1991, including the compilation zine ...Race Riot. She is a former Punk Planet columnist and a Maximumrocknroll worker, and her zine writing is archived at thread & circuits. She is also co-author of the research blog on dress and beauty threadbared.
D R. S O O A H K W O N
Soo Ah Kwon (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley 2005) is Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies and Human and Community Development. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests include youth activism and youth culture, U.S. based social movements and transnational youth activism, the intersections of nonprofit and NGO in citizenship and governance, immigrant and urban communities, and qualitative research including ethnography, participatory action research, and oral histories.
Her book Uncivil Youth: Activism and Affirmative Governmentality is forthcoming with Duke University Press in which she examines the rise of social justice-oriented nonprofits which support youth of color activism as embedded within a logic of the neoliberal governance to enable and manage potentially “at-risk” youth of color to become "good" self-empowered democratic subjects and deployscivil society as a mode of affirmative governmentality.
Her book Uncivil Youth: Activism and Affirmative Governmentality is forthcoming with Duke University Press in which she examines the rise of social justice-oriented nonprofits which support youth of color activism as embedded within a logic of the neoliberal governance to enable and manage potentially “at-risk” youth of color to become "good" self-empowered democratic subjects and deployscivil society as a mode of affirmative governmentality.
S A R A H M O O N C A S S I N E L L I
Sarah Moon Cassinelli is a third year doctoral candidate in English at UIUC. Her area of study is 20th century American literature. Specifically, she analyzes U.S. colonial projects in 20th century American literature through a comparative analysis of Indigenous studies and Asian American studies by focusing on certain sites, like Hawai'i, the Philippines, and Korea. Sarah's work predominantly focuses on issues of citizenship, national belonging, militarization, transnationalism/al adoption, and race.
F A Y H O D Z A
Fay is from Zimbabwe, and he is currently a PhD student in Human and Community Development with a concentration in Community Studies and Outreach. He has a BA and a Masters in Sociology, both from the University of Zimbabwe. He has worked closely with youth leadership and development agencies in Zimbabwe, including Save the Children, Oxfam, and programs for food supplement, orphan care, and rural livelihood. He is a lecturer on official leave at the Africa University in Zimbabwe, he has two published journal articles in Africa, he has presented papers at conferences, and he has received numerous honors and awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship. His current research examines the construction and management of youth homelessness in rural America, paying particular attention to how potential forms of marginalization relating to gender, sexuality, and power unfolds within the context of two crisis intervention programs that target homeless youth in rural Illinois. Hiis work seeks to highlight assumptions of crisis intervention by challenging heteronormative and disempowering constructions of homeless youth that makes it difficult for community crisis workers to transgress boundaries of gender, sexuality and power in their work with young people in crisis situations.
J E A N L E E
Jean Lee is a fouth-year PhD candidate in the English Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She studies postcolonial Caribbean literature with a focus on race, gender and sexuality in national and regional narratives. Her academic work explores postcolonial theory, critical race theory, queer theory, diasporic studies, and critiques of the nation.
S H A N T E L M A R T I N E Z
Shantel Martinez is a doctoral student in the Institute of Communications Research whose research interests include critical cultural studies, spatial theory, youth culture and studies, sexuality, gender, and women of color feminism. She is interested in how sexuality is spatially produced, reconfigured, regulated, and consumed within digital online spaces and social participatory media.
Her dissertation puts into dialogue the It Gets Better campaign, GLSEN's Safe Space campaign, and MTV's It's A Thin Line-- all which focus on the bullying and harassment of LGBTQ youth or youth taunted with homophobic language -- in order to understand how these narratives and discourses shape this population as a "crisis" population, the pitfalls and shortcomings of this framework, the critical role digital media and networking play into this topic, as well as how these campaigns mediate larger socio-political topics of our present day.
Her dissertation puts into dialogue the It Gets Better campaign, GLSEN's Safe Space campaign, and MTV's It's A Thin Line-- all which focus on the bullying and harassment of LGBTQ youth or youth taunted with homophobic language -- in order to understand how these narratives and discourses shape this population as a "crisis" population, the pitfalls and shortcomings of this framework, the critical role digital media and networking play into this topic, as well as how these campaigns mediate larger socio-political topics of our present day.
R A C H E L S T O R M
Rachel Storm is a PhD student in Global Educational Policy, Organization, Leadership pursuing graduate minors in Gender and Women's Studies and Gender Relations in International Development (WGGP). She received her BA in International Studies with a focus in Gender and Development in 2009. With support from the Tinker Fellowship for Latin American Field Research (CLACS), the Barbara A. Yates International Research Award (WGGP), and the Virginia M. Wagner International Research Award (Soroptimist International), her current research examines the relationships of power between the State, NGOs, and feminist organizing in Ecuador as fashioned and refashioned by the language of the 2008 constitutional revision.
Having worked with numerous NGOs, she centers the subject of the nonprofit in her scholarship. Her broader professional and academic interests include human rights discourse and policy, transnational feminist cultural studies, social movement formation, and poststructural feminist pedagog(ies).
Having worked with numerous NGOs, she centers the subject of the nonprofit in her scholarship. Her broader professional and academic interests include human rights discourse and policy, transnational feminist cultural studies, social movement formation, and poststructural feminist pedagog(ies).
A N N E N . L U T O M I A
Anne N. Lutomia is a doctoral Student in Human Resource Development at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received her Masters in Nonprofit Management from Hamline University in Minnesota. She completed her Bachelor's in French, Secretarial Studies and Education at Kenyatta University in Kenya. Her research interests include women, work, race relations, migration, community organization, the African diaspora and feminist theory. Her current research focuses on the socialization and career development of African Nurses in the United States. She has taught as Swahili Teaching Assistant and the served as Vice President of the African Student Organization.
Her NGO and nonprofit experience includes four years as a Program Assistant with the Center for African Studies a capacity building in reproductive health organization and six years as an Administrative Assistant with the Cultural Wellness Center a Minnesota based community organization that uses culture to create knowledge. Her nonprofit interests are: community organizing, board management, volunteer work and project coordination in women led and immigrant nonprofit organization. She currently serves as a board advisor to two Boston/western Kenya based nonprofits – Acacia in Kenya and Global Youth Groove.
Her NGO and nonprofit experience includes four years as a Program Assistant with the Center for African Studies a capacity building in reproductive health organization and six years as an Administrative Assistant with the Cultural Wellness Center a Minnesota based community organization that uses culture to create knowledge. Her nonprofit interests are: community organizing, board management, volunteer work and project coordination in women led and immigrant nonprofit organization. She currently serves as a board advisor to two Boston/western Kenya based nonprofits – Acacia in Kenya and Global Youth Groove.