Roderick A. Ferguson is associate professor of race and critical theory in the Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. Jenny Sharpe is professor of English at UCLA and author of Ghosts of Slavery: A Literary Archeology of Black Women’s Lives, which moves between past and present, history and fiction, in order to tell the everyday life stories of slave women. Organized and moderated by Naima Keith, PhD candidate, Department of Art History, UCLA.