E. PATRICK JOHNSON is Dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern University. A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Johnson’s work has greatly impacted African American Studies, Performance Studies, and Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He is the author of several books, including Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (2003); Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (2008); Black. Queer. Southern. Women.—An Oral History (2018); Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women (2019), in addition to a number of edited and co-edited collections, essays, and plays.
JANE M. SAKS is a writer, curator, educator, and artist as well as a producer, cultural and arts advocate, and creative collaborator. Her work challenges and champions issues of gender, sexuality, human rights, race and power within the worlds of arts and culture, politics and civil rights, academia and philanthropy. She is a published poet and writer, an invited lecturer at civic, cultural and educational institutions internationally – including: the United Nations, The Aspen Museum, The Nobel Center, Aspen Institute, New York University, University of Chicago, the White House, U.S. Department of Justice, Harvard University, Yale University, The New School, Whitney Museum of Art, USArtists, Music Academy of California, Northwestern University, UNFPA, and the U.S. State Department. She is an Inductee of City of Chicago’s LGBT Hall of Fame and was selected by GO Magazine as one of the national “100 Women We Love” nationally.
