Advisory Board

Abani, Chris is a writer and activist. His prose includes the novels The Virgin of Flames (Penguin, 2007) GraceLand (FSG, 2004/Picador 2005), Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985) and a novella, Becoming Abigail (Akashic, 2006). His poetry collections are Hands Washing Water ( Copper Canyon, 2006), Dog Woman (Red Hen, 2004), Daphne's Lot (Red Hen, 2003), and Kalakuta Republic (Saqi, 2001). He is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside and also teaches in the MFA Program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. He is the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award & the PEN Hemingway Book Prize. For more info: www.chrisabani.com

Carty, Linda, is a longtime activist scholar whose activism has never been separated from her scholarship. She has been involved in Black women's labor struggles in Canada, the US and the Caribbean, and HIV/AIDS work in the Black and Latino communities in the US and the Caribbean. She teaches in Africana Studies at Syracuse University.

Dasgupta, Monisha teaches Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Her research interest in migration has emerged from her participation in a Boston-based South Asian feminist group, which connected her to immigrant women's, labor and queer organizing in urban centers on the East Coast in the U.S. Post-9/11, she has worked with one of these groups, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, to document the economic impact on and backlash against this group of workers. The documentation was a part of the organization's living wage campaign. In Hawai'i, which is one of the most militarized states in the country, Das Gupta is involved with local anti-militarization and anti-war groups. Her book, Unruly Immigrants: South Asian Activism in the United States, is forthcoming from Duke University Press. Her research on organizing efforts of South Asian domestic workers appears in Canadian Woman Studies, 22 (3/4). Her analysis of the impact of 9/11 on New York City taxi drivers is published in Wounded City: The Social Impact of 9/11 edited by Nancy Foner and published by Russell Sage Books and Peace Review 16(2). Das Gupta grew up in Kolkata, India, and did her undergraduate work there. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Brandeis University.

Desai, Manali is a historical sociologist who has been working on issues of class, colonialism and the post-colonial state. Her new work addresses the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and violence in India. She is interested in questions of memory, culture, and political economy. Her activist work has lately focused on gendered violence in Gujarat, as well as issues concerning the South Asian diaspora and women in the U.K.

Falcon, Sylvanna received her PhD from the University of CA, Santa Barbara in Sociology with a doctoral emphasis in Women's Studies.  Her research and teaching interests include anti-racism, transnational feminist theories, gender, human rights, globalization, and Latin America.  She currently teaches Sociology, Women's Studies, and Chicano Studies courses for UCSB.

Fisher, Tracy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Women's Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Her research and teaching interests include African diaspora studies; critical race and feminist theory; anti-racist grassroots activism and coalition building; the state and citizenship. She is writing a manuscript which analyzes race, gender, grassroots politics and the Left in Britain.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade is Professor of Women’s Studies and Dean’s Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. Her work focuses on transnational feminist theory, cultural studies, and anti-racist education, and has been translated into German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Korean, and Japanese. She is author of Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Duke University Press, 2003 and Zubaan Books, India, 2004), and co-editor of Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Indiana University Press, 1991), and Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (Routledge, 1997). Ms. Mohanty has worked with grassroots community organizations like Awareness, Orissa, India, Grassroots Leadership of North Carolina (currently involved in a campaign against the privatization of prisons in the Southern United States), and the Center for Immigrant Families in New York City (organizing around immigrant women's struggles against racism, and for school desegregation and social justice). Ms Mohanty has worked with feminist organizers, and educators in Mexico, India and Ireland, and has served as a consultant/evaluator for the Ford Foundation and the AAC & U. She edited a series of books on “Gender, Culture and Global Politics” for Garland Publishing of New York, and now edits a series called “Comparative Feminist Studies” for Palgrave/Macmillan.

Mojab, Shahrzad  Director, Women and Gender Studies Institute and Associate Professor, is an academic-activist, teaching at the Department of Adult Education and Counseling Psychology, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her publications include, among others, articles and book chapters on Islamic Feminism; diversity and academic freedom in Canadian and Iranian universities; minority women in academe; feminism and nationalism; war, violence, and state-building; adult education and the construction of civil society in the Middle East; critical-feminist review of learning theories; and skilling and de-skilling of immigrant women. She is the editor of the first scholarly collection on Kurdish women in English Language entitled, Women of A Non-State Nation: The Kurds (2001 and second print in 2003, Mazda Publisher) and co-edited Of Property and Propriety: The Role of Gender and Class in Imperialism and Nationalism (2001, University of Toronto Press), and Violence in the Name of Honour: Theoretical and Political Challenges (2004, Bilgi University Press) .Shahrzad is one of the first prize winners of the international writing contest on “Women's Voices in War Zones” which was sponsored by the Women’s World Organization. She is currently conducting SSHRC-funded research on war, diaspora, and learning; women political prisoners in the Middle East; and war and transnational women’s organizations (check the following website: ww.utoronto.ca/wwdl.)

Okazawa-Rey Margo has been Research Consultant at the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling in East Jerusalem, Palestine since July 2005. She also is on the faculty in the School of Human and Organizational Development at the Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara California and Professor Emerita of Social Work at San Francisco State University. She is the former Director of the Women’s Leadership Institute, Mills College. She is co-editor of the groundbreaking women’s studies textbook Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives (4th Ed. McGraw Hill in press), which has been adopted in women’s studies programs nationwide. She is also co-editor of Beyond Heroes and Holidays: K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development (1998), the Encyclopedia of African American Education (1996) and Teachers, Teaching, and Teacher Education (1987). In the 1970s, she was a member of the Combahee River Collective, a black feminist group that began developing the theory of intersectionality as a basis for feminist praxis. She is co-founder of the East Asia-U.S.-Puerto Rico Women’s Network against Militarism, a transnational project that generates feminist analyses and resistance to U.S. militarism and is a Board member of Woman Vision and the Women of Color Resource Center.

Roy, Parama  (B.A., University of Delhi; M.A., Ph.D. University of Rochester) is Associate Professor of English at UC Riverside, where she teaches postcolonial literatures and theory, Victorian literature, feminist studies, and Cultural Studies.  She is the author of Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Berkeley: University of California Press and Delhi: Vistaar Press, 1998) and is completing a second book project, Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and Ethics in South Asia.  She is also co-editing a volume of essays, The Long Shadow of Empire: Gender and Violence in the Middle East and South Asia, with Piya Chatterjee of UC Riverside and Manali Desai of the University of Reading.

Srinivasan, Priya is an experienced Indian dancer and choreographer who trained in India and Australia for many years. She has learned several Asian dance forms, worked on experimental dance productions, conducted outreach programs to create awareness of immigrant issues to schools in Australia, and toured nationally and internationally with the Bharatam Dance Company as a professional dancer. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dance at University of California, Riverside with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Performance Studies. Srinivasan is working on a book project titled Performing Indian Dance in America: Interrogating Tradition, Modernity, and the Myth of Cultural Purity. Her research work suggests the fundamental connections between the histories of dance cultures in the United States and India where the female body has been the site of struggles over culture, nation, ethnicity, and identity. She has worked as an experimental dance/ theatre choreographer in Chicago and Los Angeles, and is interested in combining research work in dance with practice. She is also concerned with furthering community outreach programs that combine art with activism.