S P E A K E R S & P E R F O R M E R S
OSA ATOE is a 35 year-old Nigerian-American feminist punk rocker whose activities include booking DIY punk shows in New Orleans, teaching art to kids, zine making & blogging and pottery. She is a regular contributor to Maximum RockNRoll and Antigravity, New Orleans' alternative monthly magazine. Osa made the zine Shotgun Seamstress: a zine by & for black punks 2006-2011, and a compilation of all six issues was published by Mend My Dress Press in 2012. She played violin in former band New Bloods, who signed to Kill Rock Stars in 2007 and toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe. Since then, Osa has performed, toured and recorded with a slew of post-punk bands including Firebrand, VHS, Heat Rash and Negation. Osa has also been a touring member of the People of Color Zine Project and continues to do support work for the group from New Orleans. Osa was a recipient of the Printed Matter Award for Artists in 2009.
ALICE BAG was the lead singer of the Bags, the first female fronted punk band to play the Masque during the West Coast punk revolution of 1977. Her new book, Violence Girl, From East LA Rage to Hollywood Stage is the story of her upbringing in East LA, her eventual migration to Hollywood and the euphoria and aftermath of the first punk wave. Violence Girl reveals how domestic abuse fueled her desire for female empowerment and sheds a new perspective on the origin of hardcore, a style most often associated with white suburban males. Alice is a long-time blogger, turned author and a former bilingual elementary school teacher. (Photo: Rick Castro)
TIFFANY E. BARBER is pursuing a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester where her research interests center on contemporary black art, identity performance, and expressions of post/blackness and afrofuturism in the U.S. Her writings on art and visual culture have appeared in Beautiful/Decay Magazine, Art Focus Oklahoma, THE Magazine Los Angeles as well as various online journals and blogs. She has two forthcoming publications on the work and practices of William Pope.L and Wangechi Mutu. She is an adjunct instructor in the African and African American Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma.
LAURICA BROWN is a graduate student in Sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her research engages Black feminist theory and queer of color theories to examine gender and sexuality within popular music and media. She is currently in the process of developing her dissertation research, which focuses on the experiences and cultural contributions of queer identified women in the Hip Hop Generation. Laurica is also the host of Ladies Room, a Feminist themed Hip Hop program on KCSB 91.9FM in Santa Barbara. Her paper is called, "Checkin’ My Fresh: Fiona Simone’s Affirmation of Tomboy Identity in Hip Hop."
Artist-scholar DR. LASHONDA KATRICE BARNETT was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in Park Forest, Illinois. A graduate of the University of Missouri, she received an M.A. in Women's History from Sarah Lawrence College and the Ph.D. in American Studies from the College of William and Mary. A writer of short fiction and novels, Barnett is a fierce lover and scholar of music of the African diaspora and an avid interviewer. She has conducted over eighty interviews with women musicians and edited the volumes: I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters On Their Craft (2007) and Off The Record: Conversations With African American & Brazilian Women Musicians, (forthcoming, Rowman & Littlefield, Spring 2014). Currently she is conducting interviews for the third music book, Drop The Mic: Women Hip Hop & Neo Soul Artists Sound Off On Creative Process & Commerce (forthcoming with Wesleyan University Press/Music Interview Series, 2015). Barnett has hosted her own jazz radio program on WBAI (99.5 FM, NYC); consulted and taught 'Women in Jazz' at New York City's Jazz at Lincoln Center; and lectured on the music both nationally and internationally in Austria, Brazil, France, Germany and South Africa. The recipient of numerous awards for creative writing and scholarship, Barnett has taught at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, Hunter College and Brown University. She lives in New York City.
CHRISTA BELL is a spoken word poet, performance artist and cultural activist and a current student in the MA in Cultural Studies Program, with a designation in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, at the University of Washington. She was the inaugural keynote performer at the Women Who Rock (WWR) Un-Conference and a current member of the WWR Collective. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion and her work includes the one-woman show CoochieMagik: A Spoken Word Musical Comedy, commissioned by the National Performance Network, 1001 Holy Names for Coochie, a 24-hour endurance mantra and performance art installation, which premiered at the Seattle Art Museum as part of the opening events for Elles: Women Artists From The Centre Pompidou; and SHEism: The Woman Worship Workshop, a performance- lecture and workshop that explores the spiritual politics of female bodies. Her performance work has been featured on National Public Radio, as a TED Talk, and on afterellen.com and she has performed, by invitation, at over 100 universities, colleges, festivals and performance venues internationally. Her performance work is primarily concerned with feminist imaginings of the divine as well as how women's spiritual self-esteem impacts their participation in the political processes that govern their lives. Her research interests include black feminist theory and genealogies, feminist cultural production, performance studies and intersections of race, gender, culture and theology. She is a participant on the roundtable panel called, "Women Who Rock the Archive: Punk & Hip Hop Feminists Dialogues & Archives in the Digital Age."
NICOLE A. COOKE is an Assistant Professor at GSLIS @ The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, having graduated from Rutgers University with a PhD in Communication, Information, and Library Studies in 2012 (where she was an ALA Spectrum Doctoral Fellow). Previously, she was an instruction librarian and tenured assistant professor at Montclair State University’s (NJ) Sprague Library. Her research interests include LIS distance education and instruction, human information behavior in online settings, information literacy, and the retention and mentoring of minority Librarians and LIS Doctoral Students. Named a "Mover & Shaker" in 2007 by Library Journal, Nicole is professionally active in ACRL, ALISE, and several other professional library organizations. She holds the MLIS degree from Rutgers University, and a M.Ed. in Adult Education from Penn State. Her paper is called, "Hip-Hop Smoothed Out on a Library Tip: Exploring Literacies Through a New Pedagogical Lens."
FRANCESCA D'AMICO is a PhD candidate in the History Department at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her dissertation, tentatively entitled “Fight the Power: The Socio-Political Function of Black Urban Music, 1968-1996,” examines how black urban music functioned in a socio-political capacity to reinscribe public consciousness on the issues confronting the black underclass within a larger debate on the parameters of liberalism, democracy and the post-WWII nation state in the thirty years following the height of the Black Power Movement. Francesca is the project curator for Performing Diaspora 2013, a flagship project of the Harriet Tubman Institute that recently hosted a public history conference on the history of Toronto Hip Hop. She is also the creator of Learning Through Hip Hop, an arts-based workshop that remixes the Canadian elementary school curriculum subjects of history, math, science and language for youth between the ages of 12-18 years old. Her paper is called, "'You Must Learn': The Canadian Rap Tradition as a Tool in Approaches to Multiculturalism and Education."
MONICA DE LA TORRE is a PhD Student in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington and a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow. As a Hastac Scholar, her research interests involve the development of racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identities and the expression of these identities through cultural productions. She locates her analysis in radio production and is a writer, editor, and producer for Soul Rebel Radio (KPFK 90.7) a community radio collective based in Los Angeles. She co-curated the Women Who Rock Oral History Archive and produces media for Women Who Rock and is a member of the UW Women of Color Collective. She earned a Master’s Degree in Chicana/o Studies from California State University, Northridge. She is a participant on the roundtable panel called, "Women Who Rock the Archive: Punk & Hip Hop Feminists Dialogues & Archives in the Digital Age."
DJ LYNNEE DENISE uses turntables and scholarship to create forums exploring and celebrating Afro-Diasporic electronic music. Her work is informed, inspired and elevated by social and political movements, global travel, and personal identity. Lynnee is the founder of WildSeed Cultural Group an organization whose mission, “entertainment with a thesis,” is driven by a desire to incorporate the nontraditional elements of literature, cultural criticism and ethnomusicology into the New York, Atlanta and South African music scene. In 2010, dj lynnee denise designed a one year independent artist in residency program in the city of Atlanta, Georgia. Here she produced a body of cultural events, music compilations and wrote liner notes that reflected the range of her extensive music library and musical interests. She was granted the prestigious Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant where she travelled to South Africa to study house music in a post apartheid context. Lynnée was also chosen to co direct a 10-day intensive music (DJ) workshop with the International Educational Summer Art Rules Aruba Program. Today she is a visiting artist and lecturer in the Honors English Department at Spelman, a published music journalist and maintains a podcast with over 10,000 listeners. She holds a BA in Sociology from Fisk University and an MA in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University.
TYLER DENMEAD is an Assistant Professor of Art Education and the Director of the Saturday Art School at the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In 2011-2012, he was a post-doctoral research associate at Brown University's John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities where he taught courses in community arts pedagogy and digital storytelling. From 1997-2007, Denmead founded and led New Urban Arts, an arts collective for high school students and artist mentors. First Lady Michelle Obama awarded New Urban Arts a Coming Up Taller Award in 2008 at a White House Ceremony, recognizing it as one of the premiere arts and humanities programs for young people in the country. Denmead has received numerous awards and fellowships including the Royce Fellowship, Echoing Green Fellowship, and the Antonio Cirino Memorial Art Education Fellowship. Denmead received his MPhil (distinction-level) and PhD in Education Studies from the University of Cambridge in 2011. His research publications examining community arts pedagogies can be read in the International Journal of Education through Art and the International Journal of Education and the Arts. He is a practicing artist, most recently performing “Spinning Trace" at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois.
PORSHE R. GARNER is a doctoral student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership. Once, she dreamed of spaces that provided a place for girls to just be. That dream was made reality when she was introduced to Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT), a collective in which she co-organizes. Porshe's research interests include Black girlhood, story telling and narratives of Black girls, new literacy, and hip-hop feminism. Porshe enjoys singing, dancing, and performing and is excited to be presenting at the Hip Hop and Punk Feminisms Symposium. She is part of a presentation called, "The Hip Hop Feminist Monologues."
NYKY GOMEZ is a fourth generation Mexican-american of Apache and Comanche descent. Nyky writes Skinned Heart Zine, connecting her personal experiences in life to political and social themes in hopes of creating conversation that will lead to big and small change. Her writing focuses on her experiences as a Brown women involved in punk and activist sub-culture, relationships, healing from abuse,family, resistance culture, assimilation and feminism. Nyky also currently operates Brown Recluse Zine Distro, a project dedicated to centering zines written by People of Color started in the spirit of visibility. Nyky spends her days making her dreams and visions into mixed media collages, writing Skinned Heart Zine, gardening, spending time in the woods, learning the fine magical art of reading tarot and weaving spells with her water family. Dominatrix and social worker for pay, creative spirit, warrior, bruja, punkera and feminista by nature. She is a lizard-hearted desert born Tejana currently living in Seattle, Washington with her husband and dog.
MARTHA GONZALEZ was born and raised in East Los Angeles and is a Chicana artivista (artist/activist), musician, feminist music theorist and academic. An assistant professor in Intercollegiate Chicana/o Latina/o Studies at Scripps College, Gonzalez earned a PhD from the Gender Women Sexuality Studies (GWSS) department at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her academic interest in music has been fueled by her own musicianship as a singer and percussionist for East L.A’s Quetzal for the last 17 years. The unique blend of East Los Angeles sounds as well as the social justice content in the work has sparked dialogue and theoretical work among various artist communities, culture theorists, and scholars across the country, Mexico and Japan. Quetzal's 2013 Grammy-winning CD “Imaginaries” was inspired in part by Emma Perez's Decolonial Imaginaries: Writing Chicanas into History. She is a participant on the roundtable panel called, "Women Who Rock the Archive: Punk & Hip Hop Feminists Dialogues & Archives in the Digital Age."
JENNIFER A. GREENHILL is an associate professor in the Art History Program in the School of Art + Design at the University of Illinois, with an affiliation with the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. She is a specialist in the history of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American art and visual culture, which she often explores in relation to literary and theatrical forms of expression. She is the author of Playing It Straight: Art and Humor in the Gilded Age (University of California Press, 2012), is a co-editor of A Companion to American Art (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming 2014), and has published several articles on topics such as the racialized unconscious of Norman Rockwell’s work made before the civil rights era for the Saturday Evening Post; the politics of whiteness in the circa 1900 black-and-white imagery of the illustrators Charles Dana Gibson and George du Maurier; and the menial and often racialized labor of caricature in the 1850s. She is currently preparing an article on the African American photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks, and is this semester teaching a graduate seminar on the politics of black visuality in twentieth-century popular media as a way to think through the complex issues his multifaceted work addresses.
MICHELLE HABELL-PALLAN, is Associate Professor in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies and Adjunct in the School of Music and Communication at the University of Washington. She authored Loca Motion: The Travels of Chicana/Latina Popular Culture (NYU Press) and coedited Cornbread and Cuchifritos: Ethnic Identity Politics, Transnationalization, and Transculturation in American Urban Popular Music (WVT, Germany/Bilingual Press); co-curated the award-winning and currently traveling exhibit American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music hosted by the Smithsonian Institution's Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES); co-directs the Women Who Rock Research and Digital Archive Project; and jams with the Seattle Fandango Project. She has been writing on the intersection of punk and Chicana feminism since the 1990s. Her recent article on "'Death to Racism and Punk Revisionism': Alice Bag's Vexing Voice and the Unspeakable Influence of Canción Ranchera on Hollywood Punk" appears in Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt (Duke University Press, 2012). She is a participant on the roundtable panel called, "Women Who Rock the Archive: Punk & Hip Hop Feminists Dialogues & Archives in the Digital Age."
JILLIAN HERNANDEZ, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in Ethnic Studies and Critical Gender Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her transdisciplinary scholarship, which synthesizes methods from anthropology, art history, and cultural studies, draws from her experiences as a girls' educator and curator of contemporary art. Hernandez's research investigates questions regarding processes of racialization, sexualities, embodiment, girlhood, and the politics of cultural production ranging from underground and mainstream hip hop to visual and performance art. Her paper is called, "Politics of Pink: Theorizing Nicki Minaj’s Rococo Aesthetics."
INVINCIBLE’s spitfire wordplay has received acclaim from fans all across the world, while their active involvement in progressive social change has taken their music beyond entertainment toward actualizing the change they wish to see. As a co-founder of EMERGENCE Media, they released their debut album ShapeShifters (2008) and produced award winning videos like The Revival (2009) about women in hip-hop, and Locusts (2008) exploring displacement and gentrification in Detroit. They have performed on stages and in clubs, community centers, campuses, pride celebrations, and festivals around the world for over a decade, both as a solo artist, and featured as part of the anti-misogyny Hip-Hop collective ANOMOLIES. They teamed up with longtime producer Waajeed in 2010 to release a limited edition 7" single "Detroit Summer/Emergence." Invincible is a fellow of Kresge Arts in Detroit, and the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for Women and Gender in the Arts and Media.
In addition to their work as a performing artist, for the last decade Invincible has worked with Detroit Summer, a multi-racial, inter-generational collective in Detroit that is transforming communities through youth facilitative leadership, creativity and collective action. They were also the co-coordinator and co-founder of the Detroit Future Youth network to support social justice and media-based youth projects throughout the city.
Invincible is currently working with renown producer Waajeed (Bling47/DIRT TECH RECK) and visual artist Wesley Taylor on Complex Movements, an interactive multimedia installation based hip-hop collective exploring the relationship between complex sciences and social justice movements.
KAREN JAIME earned her PhD in Performance Studies from New York University and is currently a Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karen's critical writing has been published in Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory and in the online journal of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, e-Misférica. Her research interests include: Latina/o literature, spoken word poetry and hip-hop theatre, critical race theory, queer and feminist theory, and performance. Karen is also an accomplished spoken word/performance artist who served as the host/curator for the Friday Night Slam at the world-renowned Nuyorican Poets Café from 2002-2005. As a published poet, Karen’s work is included in The Best of Panic! En Vivo From the East Village and Flicker and Spark: A Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry. Her paper is called, "Ellison Renee Glenn, Black Cracker, and the Politics of (Re) Presentation."
23 year-old Champaign-Urbana native, KLEVAH "NINJA" KNOX, has always wanted to be an MC, as far back as before she learned how to write in cursive. It wasn’t until recently that she began taking her craft seriously and acknowledging it as her destiny. She holds her father responsible for her talent; he too was a wordsmith, leading Klevah to engage with Hip-Hop at a very young age. Klevah’s music is genuine and versatile. Labeling herself as a storyteller, she rhymes about personal experience, things that matter to her such as love or matters relevant to her generation. Maintaining the momentum of her group TheGr8Thinkaz, she has recently released her debut album "The W8." You will immediately get a sense of how lyrical, honest, soulful and refreshing the project is listening to The W8 Intro alone. She is purely Hip-Hop, and sets a new standard for both female and male emcees alike. Admist the setbacks, the flaws, and everyday struggles that Klevah openly expresses in her music, there is no doubt that with her growing audience, maturing sound and fervent presence that Everything is...Gr8.
Odaymara Cuesta and Olivia Prendes are Cuban Hip Hop emcees, independent musicians, poets, and theater performers representing the artivism of womyn, immigrants, and queer people of color as a central part of world change. Formed in Habana in 1999, KRUDAS CUBENSI brought the female voice to a birthing genre in Cuba. They migrated to US in 2006 and have earned international acclaim performing, recording, speaking, and touring in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The 45 mins Krudas set includes Cubensi Hip Hop, Dancehall, old school and fresh beats from around the world laced with their extraordinary Afro-Cuban rebel hardcore feminists lyrics and indomitable voices, sounds, dances and energies to empower communities. Internationally recognized Krudas Cubensi has performed in spaces such as Festival da Mulher Afro Latino Americana e Caribenha (Brasilia 2013), Marcha Mundial Das Mulheres (Sao Paulo Brasil 2013) Ladys Fest (Sao Paulo 1013) Trinity Hip Hop Festival (Conecticut 2013), Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (2011-2012), Antimili Sonoro Festival (Medellin Colombia 2011), VIII Encuentro Lesbico Feminista de America Latina y el Caribe (Guatemala 2010), XI encuentro Feminista Latinoamercano y del Caribe, Mex City 2009, Festival/ Simposio Internacional de Hip Hop Cubano (La Habana, Cuba 1998-2005), Kansas University, Santa Cruz University, New York University, Texas University, New Mexico University, University of Illinois, Lehigh University, Tucson Arizona University, House of Blue Theatre (Chicago), S.O.B.s (New York City), 1st Avenue Theatre (Minneapolis Minnesota), Canopy Club (Urbana Illinois), Lula Lounge (Toronto Canada) and many more. In addition, they have had collaborated in various art projects and have performed with artist such as: Susana Vaca, Climbing Poetree, Invincible, Godess and She, Lah Tere, D’bi Young, Aya de Leon, Quetzal and many more. In Cuba, cruda (Kruda) means raw, unprocessed, unrefined, natural, real. Cubensi is a related word to caribbean areas native species. Krudas Cubensi: The raw ones natives from Cuba and the Caribbean representing in the world. For good people, for the womyn of the world and peace and our mothers, for matriarchal cultures resistance to continue the eternal struggle to live in balance. Olivia Prendes. There‘ s not real revolution whithout womyn. Odaymara Cuesta.
JEFF HORWAT is an artist, teacher, and writer who is currently working on a PhD student in Art Education at the University of Illinois. Jeff's research focuses on preservice student art teachers who maintain the fantasy of being a practicing artist while teaching full time in the public schools. Jeff is using a framework that combines Lacanian Psychoanalytic theory and virtue ethics to understand how this fantasy gets challenged by rigid institutional norms found in conventional schooling that support a contrived notions of moral professionalism. Jeff advocates for this artist-teacher fantasy, arguing that a creative art practice is not a self-serving act but is actually a necessary form intellectual self cultivation that enriches both the art teacher and their students. He is a member of the Art Eddies.
MEADOW JONES is an artist, activist, and educator, pursuing her PhD in Art Education at the University of Illinois. She is interested in the intersection of artistic practice and social change. She received her masters degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois where she focused her work on Community Informatics and Special Collections. She graduated from Smith College with a BA in Intellectual History. She is a member of the Art Eddies.
CARRIE LANZA, M.S.W. is a mother, doctoral candidate in Social Welfare at University of Washington, and culture worker. Her research broadly explores arts and media production in community-engaged praxis and research. This investigation has manifested in her dissertation, a genealogy of media-based welfare research, political advocacy, and social action during the Progressive era entitled, “Truth Plus Publicity”: Paul U. Kellogg, Hybrid Practice and Progressive Era Visual Research Methods, 1902-1917. She is also proud to be part of the Women Who Rock Community Research Project, a feminist collective effort exploring gender, race, and sexuality in music and social justice movements via multi-media scholarship, teaching, and community engagement. She teaches in the University of Washington, Bothell School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the University of Washington School of Social Work. Translating/Transforming "American Sabor” for the Digital Humanities is in progress. She is a participant on the roundtable panel called, "Women Who Rock the Archive: Punk & Hip Hop Feminists Dialogues & Archives in the Digital Age."
DJ L’OQENZ (pronounced Eloquence) is a powerful force to be reckoned with. Her passion for music and undeniable skills on the turntables have made her a sought-after commodity at home in Toronto and abroad. Born Fayola Leach, it was a love of entertaining family and friends that sent the industrious young woman fervently digging through crates to build up her distinctive repertoire. A true lover of music, she is not confined to one genre. Spinning everything from hip hop to house, L’Oqenz has the ability to fuse them all effortlessly.
L’Oqenz has the ability to shift easily from the role of a DJ, to producer, to event manager without blinking an eye or missing a step. She co-hosted Cypha, one of Canada’s first television programs dedicated to hip hop music. The show acted as a platform for artists like Saukrates, Kardinall Offishal, Common Sense, and Gang Starr among others. Spinning at the 2001 Toronto Urban Festival held at the Canadian National Exhibition Band Shell (CNE), L’Oqenz gained widespread recognition. The same year, L’Oqenz made the transition from performing live to orchestrating “The Master Plan Show,” which aired on college radio (CIUT 89.5 FM).
As a DJ, she has performed in Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, Windsor, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, Jamaica, U.K. and Singapore. She has shared the stage with some of the most respected artists in the business including Zaki Ibrahim, K’Naan, Tanika Charles, Bedouin Soundclash, Saidah Baba Talibah, Motion, ISIS, Masia One, Jean Grae, Apani B Fly, Zion I, M1 (of Dead Prez), Bahamadia, Ursula Rucker, Erykah Badu, Hi Tek & Talib Kweli, The Roots, Maceo (of De La Soul) and Kool Herc. During her time working with District Six Music, L’Oqenz, co-managed and executive produced Zaki Ibrahim’s debut EP Eclectica (Episodes in Purple). Currently she manages the career of Tanika Charles. She continues to tour, rock parties and stays relevant releasing mixes online. Catch her every month at JANG BANG for HEADSPACE or at Czehoski - Hip Hop Industry Sunday spinning along w/DJ NaNa & Kaewonder.
Committed to bettering her community, L’Oqenz has set aside time to teach and fundraise for youth in Toronto. Working alongside such foundations War Child & Doctors Without Borders. She teamed up with DJ DTS and Gena Lee to facilitate a DJ class at Ryerson University, and currently heads up the DJ workshops at St. Albans Boys & Girls Club and UforChange. As Aritzias resident DJ, she produced and arranged the Queen Aritzia compilation, all proceeds for which were donated to the YWCA.
L’Oqenz has the ability to shift easily from the role of a DJ, to producer, to event manager without blinking an eye or missing a step. She co-hosted Cypha, one of Canada’s first television programs dedicated to hip hop music. The show acted as a platform for artists like Saukrates, Kardinall Offishal, Common Sense, and Gang Starr among others. Spinning at the 2001 Toronto Urban Festival held at the Canadian National Exhibition Band Shell (CNE), L’Oqenz gained widespread recognition. The same year, L’Oqenz made the transition from performing live to orchestrating “The Master Plan Show,” which aired on college radio (CIUT 89.5 FM).
As a DJ, she has performed in Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, Windsor, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, Jamaica, U.K. and Singapore. She has shared the stage with some of the most respected artists in the business including Zaki Ibrahim, K’Naan, Tanika Charles, Bedouin Soundclash, Saidah Baba Talibah, Motion, ISIS, Masia One, Jean Grae, Apani B Fly, Zion I, M1 (of Dead Prez), Bahamadia, Ursula Rucker, Erykah Badu, Hi Tek & Talib Kweli, The Roots, Maceo (of De La Soul) and Kool Herc. During her time working with District Six Music, L’Oqenz, co-managed and executive produced Zaki Ibrahim’s debut EP Eclectica (Episodes in Purple). Currently she manages the career of Tanika Charles. She continues to tour, rock parties and stays relevant releasing mixes online. Catch her every month at JANG BANG for HEADSPACE or at Czehoski - Hip Hop Industry Sunday spinning along w/DJ NaNa & Kaewonder.
Committed to bettering her community, L’Oqenz has set aside time to teach and fundraise for youth in Toronto. Working alongside such foundations War Child & Doctors Without Borders. She teamed up with DJ DTS and Gena Lee to facilitate a DJ class at Ryerson University, and currently heads up the DJ workshops at St. Albans Boys & Girls Club and UforChange. As Aritzias resident DJ, she produced and arranged the Queen Aritzia compilation, all proceeds for which were donated to the YWCA.
ANGELICA MACKLIN is a filmmaker, multimedia producer at the National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning, and digital media instructor at the University of Washington. She is also a PhD student in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She has taught courses in Video Production, Post-Production Techniques, Women Who Rock Oral History Production, and Transnational Media Methods in study abroad courses in South Africa and Brazil. Angelica has served on the Women Who Rock Community Organizing Committee since 2011. Her primary role has been documenting Women Who Rock Community events, teaching Women Who Rock media courses, filming and editing oral histories, and managing the media assets for the archive. She is also on the organizing committee for the annual Women Who Rock unConference and is curator of the annual Women Who Rock Film Festival. Angelica is co-director of "Masizakhe: Building Each Other" a film that highlights cultural activists in the Nelson Mandela Metro of the Eastern Cape of South Africa. She is currently working on a feature documentary that follows the life work of leading activists in the town of Araçuaí, Brazil. She is a participant on the roundtable panel called, "Women Who Rock the Archive: Punk & Hip Hop Feminists Dialogues & Archives in the Digital Age."
ROBERT MARTINEZ completed his PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and teaches courses in twentieth-century and contemporary British fiction and film at Eastern Illinois University (EIU). His research focuses on subjects as diverse as post-war and contemporary British and American literature and culture, Cold War history, foreign cinema, satire, postcolonial literature, and popular music. He has presented his work at numerous conferences, including MLA, MMLA, and the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, and has published on British novelist Martin Amis. His current research projects deal with post-9/11 American rock music and postcolonial critiques of cultural identity and diaspora. Dr. Martínez is also affiliated with EIU's programs in Latin American Studies and Women's Studies.
KYLE T. MAYS is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Illinois. He is working on his dissertation entitled, And We Shall Remain: Reclaiming Detroit as an Indigenous Space, 1837-1994, for which he was awarded a Newberry Consortium in American Indian Studies Graduate Fellowship. The dissertation is a cultural and social history, which examines how race and gender are formed through Indigenous peoples and presences in Detroit. He is the author ofTransnational Progressivism: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Universal Races Congress of 1911 published in the American Indian Quarterly (Vol. 37, No. 3, 2013). He also serves as the managing editor for the new Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal, published by the University of Minnesota Press. His paper is called, "A Search Past Stereotypes: Indigenous Males Constructing Masculinities through Hip Hop¾and Organic Pheminism."
MEKHATANSH KHEPERTAKHI MCGUIRE is a Gender and Women’s Studies major at the University of Kentucky. Her current scholarly focus is in Hip Hop feminism, Transnational feminist theory, Diaspora studies as well as Black feminist studies. In this academic focus is an aim which seek to challenge modes of androcentrism, misogyny, colorism, sexualization and the lack of agency for Black girls in and out of an academic context. Her series art piece is called, “But Some of Us Are Brave”: Challenging the Modes of Colorism and Misogyny in Hip Hop.”
Since the age of fourteen, and as one of Canada's premier urban artists and music pioneers, MICHEE MEE has rocked stages around the world. She made one of her first stage performances with the legendary hip hop group, BDP, and was the only Canadian featured as part of Queen Latifah's "Ladies First" single and video. As the first Canadian hip hop artist to seek major label representation outside of Canada, Michie was signed to First Priority/Atlantic Records. With her now-classic single, “Jamaican Funk,” Michie Mee has solidifed her place as one of the country's pioneers of hip hop, and earned her title as Canada's Queen of Hip Hop. Possessing a keen ability to seamlessly mesh several genres of music, from hip hop, to dancehall, to rock, Michie was a founding member of the alt-rock group Raggadeath, demonstrating her versatility as an artist. She has toured with the likes of Public Enemy, and fellow Canadians, Maestro Fresh Wes, and Dream Warriors. Counting numerous Juno nominations under her belt, Michie was inducted to the Stylus Spinfest Hall of Fame in 2012. Michie is currently mentoring emerging artists through her new label, MBM Entertainment, and is working on an EP, to be released later this year. In addition to music, Michie Mee has also extended her talents to acting over the years, and has been seen in several film and television roles.
An award-winning emcee/poet, playwright, screenwriter & Hip Hop artist, MOTION’s fusion of word, sound and drama is a potent mix of the ancient to the futuristic. Her lyrical agility has taken her to the stages of Manifesto Jamaica, the Urban Music Awards, CBC Television and HBO Def Poetry Jam. Lauded by Now Magazine as a “multi-talented, truthful artist,” Motion flipped the page of northside lit with the release of Motion In Poetry and 40 Dayz, writing and producing Aneemah’s Spot, which debuted at the Rock Paper Sistaz festival, and other featured works at Obsidian and Factory theatres, Luminato, Summerworks Festival and Young Centre for the Arts. Currently, Motion is playwright-in-residence at Obsidian Theatre Company. Inspired by her work with the legendary Fresh Arts movement, MotionLive continues developing emerging talent in creative spaces such as St. Alban's, AMY Project, Urban Arts and the Caribbean International Literary Festival.
SARAH MOWITZ is a junior at the University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana, studying Ethnomusicology with a concentration in Queer Hip Hop and Hip Hop produced by Turkish communities in urban Germany. She is pursuing minors in German and African American Studies and is an active leader in the campus LGBTQ and social justice communities. She hails from Des Moines, Iowa, and is a classically trained harpist.
CURRAN NAULT is an instructor at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and is the Artistic Director of Polari (formerly aGLIFF), the oldest film festival in Austin, TX, and the largest and longest running LGBTQIA festival in the Southwest. He recently received his PhD in Radio-Television-Film from UT with a dissertation on queercore, a multimedia queer and punk subculture that was instigated in Toronto by the radical iconoclasts G.B. Jones, Bruce LaBruce and Candy Parker. His writings on queer cinema have been presented at conferences throughout the United States and published in Jump Cut, Feminist Media Studies, The NeoAmericanist and the anthology Queer Love in Film and Television. His paper is called, ""From Imagined Violence to Terrorist Chic: Women of Color and Strategies of Resistance within Queercore Subculture."
BRAD OLSON is a Ph.D. student in Art Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,, who also performs locally as an independent musician. While interested in the role of informal learning and online social media as a platform for learning, Brad's dissertation also delves into the topic of Edupunk, or the application of DIY techniques and anti-capitalist subversion to education in the classroom. Brad sees learning as an inherently radical and transformative force whose importance extends beyond schools and into daily social experience. He is a member of the Art Eddies.
BLAIR E. SMITH is a PhD student in the Cultural Foundations of Education department at Syracuse University. Her research situates Black feminist theories and sociology as critical pedagogical praxis that speaks to issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in formal educational spaces, specifically for Black girls and women. More so, Blair is interested in co-creating spaces for Black girls and women to celebrate, cultivate and affirm identities across difference and work collectively to shine light on issues of social inequality. Blair, self-proclaimed hip-hop feminist beat-maker, enjoys collecting and sampling vinyl records, blending sounds from the past with black feminist voices. Blair is excited to share this love at the conference during the skillshare workshops.
RINNA REM is a librarian and archivist at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Her research investigates archives of the Khmer Rouge as alternative sites for mourning, healing, and justice. As a librarian, she works to provide multicultural resources for youth. She is a participant on the roundtable panel called, "Women Who Rock the Archive: Punk & Hip Hop Feminists Dialogues & Archives in the Digital Age."
SONNET RETMAN is an Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies and Adjunct with the Departments of English and Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She teaches courses in African American literary, cinema and performance studies. She also co-directs the Women Who Rock Research and Digital Archive Project. She has published essays on race, gender and genre in journals such as PMLA Journal, Women and Performance, African American Review, and Museum Anthropology. In her first book, Real Folks: Race and Genre in the Great Depression (Duke 2011), she investigates the racialized manufacture and contestation of the folk in the conjoined genres of documentary and satire in the 1930s. She is presently working on a book about the literary ethnographies of the 1940s that registered the social effects of racial segregation to produce a counter history of democracy in war-time. She is a participant on the roundtable panel called, "Women Who Rock the Archive: Punk & Hip Hop Feminists Dialogues & Archives in the Digital Age."
MICHELLE RIVERA is a doctoral candidate in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on pan-ethnic constructions of Latina/o identity in popular culture, music fandom, and digital representations online. She recently defended her dissertation on the global crossover of reggaetón music in the digital age. Michelle has published research on minority children and the media as well as on the visual culture of the anti-reggaetón movement online. Her paper is called, "'Lah Tere': A Powerful Voice from Underground."
JESSICA L. ROBINSON is a lover and fighter from the Midwest (Chicago by way of St. Louis). From the age of 14, she had worked as a reproductive justice community worker in various capacities. Her current research interests include cultural politics and representation in digital spaces, performance studies, reproductive justice, girls’ studies, and community organizing. Currently, Jessica is a doctoral student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership and works with the SOLHOT organizing collective. She is part of a presentation called, "The Hip Hop Feminist Monologues."
ARIANA RUIZ is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She is currently completing her dissertation entitled “In Transit: Latinas’ Claim to Space within and beyond the Borderlands.” This project examines how social and physical mobility is expressed and complicates temporal and spatial landscapes within contemporary Latina literature and culture. Her research interests include Latina/o cultural studies, travel literature, transnational feminism, critical race theory, cultural geography, and youth culture studies.
SANDRA RUIZ earned her PhD in Performance Studies from New York University and her BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. From 2012-2013, she held the position of Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently at UIUC as an Assistant Professor of Latina/Latino Studies and English and affiliate faculty of Comparative and World Literatures and CLACS. Sandra has co-edited a volume with Tracie D. Morris called Policy Matters for Women in Performance: a journal of feminist theory. And her article entitled “Running into Ricanness: Papo Colo’s Temporal Shifts in Being,” will be included in the forthcoming book Performativity’s Horizon: An Anthology for Performance Studies co-edited by José Esteban Muñoz and Alexandra Vazquez. She is presently at work on her book manuscript entitled Ricanness: The Performance of Time, Bodily Endurance, and Policy.
DR. TANYA L. SAUNDERS is an assistant professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. Her areas of interest are: the African Diaspora in the Americas, arts-based activism, critical queer theory, and culturally-based challenges to coloniality in the Americas. She has published in Latin American Perspectives, Black Women Gender and Family, SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, and the Caribbean Review of Gender Studies. Her forthcoming book with University of Texas Press is entitled Black Thoughts, Black Revolution: The Arts-Based Activism of the Cuban Underground Hip Hop Movement. Her paper is called, "Theorizing Anarcho-Punk Hip Hop Feminism: A Case Study from Brazil."
As a Ph.D. Candidate in Performance Studies at New York University, ELIZABETH STINSON researches alternative transnational networks, feminism, art, and postcoloniality. She received a B.A. from California State University, Los Angeles in Theatre Arts, and went to University of California, Irvine for an M.F.A. in Acting/Drama. Prior to a further stint in academia, Stinson resided in Olympia, WA, where she joined forces to organize two festivals: Ladyfest and Homo A Gogo. Her published work includes “Means of Detection: A Critical Archiving of Black Feminism & Punk Performance” in a co-edited special issue of Women & Performance (2012) and “Zombified Capital in the Neocolonial Capital: Circulation (of Blood) in Sony Labou Tansi’s Parentheses of Blood” in the book Race, Oppression, and the Zombie (2010). She is also on the Editorial Board for Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory.
CLEO SUGG is a multi-dimensional natural hairstylist, who specializes in natural hair care/styles, hair braiding, loc (dreadlock care), hair care products, and custom wig making. Cleo considers her work to be wearable art, that embodies history, fashion, uniqueness, and class, for the everyday ethnic woman. She has done recent work with IHBA (Illinois Hair Braiding Association) in the Natural Hairstylist/Loctician/Hair Braiders Summit, and will be working in future Natural hair summits in the coming months. Cleo has worked in the natural hair industry within Chicag- based salons such as: Christian Fields Style Bar, Amour Salon, and will soon be joining a team of fellow natural hair stylists in an up and coming premiere natural hair salon on Chicago's Southside.
PASHA TROTTER is a PhD student in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign whose research takes shape through an assemblage of interests – critical race studies, state violence, biopolitics, and performances of resistance mediated by social media. Pasha examines a range of locations and resources: schools, policy documents, and social media sites to make sense of how neoliberal logics construct Black death. Pasha’s social and community engagement practices, which span working alongside activist collectives to teaching hip hop and religion, guides their overall academic scholarship. They are part of a presentation called, "The Hip Hop Feminist Monologues."
Not looking for fame or riches, Chicago native T.R.U.T.H is looking to be heard and create change. She’s been writing poetry and raps since the age of 7. Hip Hop is her first love along with helping others and grabs the pen to ensure she is honest with herself and her craft. She has recently begun applying her skills in front of the mic exclusively and hopes ears will open wide to listen to her story and the new talent she prepares to bring to the game. T.R.U.T.H is one member of the group PS (Paradigm Shift) consisting of poets, emcees, singers, comedians and other artists. A group focused on shifting the status quo. Now is time for the Shift.
ANNA VO has been playing in punk, metal and indie bands for over ten years, and is currently in six bands that were formed around concepts of identity and politics. She also has a solo 12 string guitar project which will be touring Europe in Spring 2014. She also has a record label, An Out Recordings, that is in its sixth year. Alongside playing and releasing music, Anna has involved in various art installations and protest dance performances/events. She has organised venues, festivals, and community spaces in eight countries. Her focus is on anti-racism programming within a feminist framework. Other community work addresses refugee and PoC populations, and their experiences and resources in white-dominated societies. She attends this conference with her interview-based zine, FIX MY HEAD, that focuses on PoC in a global context, and their experiences playing punk music, writing and organising politically. She also will draw from her personal zine, The Swan The Vulture, that addresses her perspective as a survivor, feminist, vegan, anarchist of color participating in political organising and playing in punk bands. Since relocating to the USA in October 2013, she continues her music, art, community work and social work whilst finishing her novel for young adults - about growing up Vietnamese in a white Australian beach town.
ANYA WALLACE is currently a doctoral student at Penn State! University in Art Education and Women’s Studies and a working visual artist. She received a BA from Agnes Scott College in Studio Art and Spanish and studied Photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work in photography is shaped by her deep connection to women, girlhood, and critical race studies. She has worked in the service of girls for over a decade through program and curriculum development with the Girl Scouts of the USA (Savannah, GA) and as the Director of The Museum of Contemporary Art's (North Miami) Women on the Rise! outreach program for girls. Her research interests center on the intersection of art theory, social justice, literature, and women’s health, and combined with photographic field study document the construction(s) of methodologies and social activism related to reproductive health, sex, and sexuality among black female youth. Her paper is called, "(re)Collecting Pleasure with Young Black Women and Girls in The Vibrator Project: A Survey of Record Making."
MAKO FITTS WARD is a feminist educator, writer and activist who teaches in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Her work is informed by Black feminist epistemologies and community-centered methodologies that engage the voices of youth, women of color, queer and gender non-conforming communities, with a specific focus on the contemporary urban, African-American experiences. Dr. Ward's research centers on applying an intersectional approach of race, gender, class and sexuality to analyses of hip hop cultural production and urban community organizing specifically using hip-hop cultural expression as a tool for social justice activism. She is a member of the Women Who Rock Collective, a founding member of the collective’s annual “Women Who Rock (un)Conference” and has served as an interviewer for the WWR archives. Ward has published popular and scholarly essays on body ethics and aesthetics among women of color, media and gender images, women in hip-hop, gentrification and cultural displacement, and Black women’s social movement organizing in the early 20th century. She is a participant on the roundtable panel called, "Women Who Rock the Archive: Punk & Hip Hop Feminists Dialogues & Archives in the Digital Age."
LISA WEEMS is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Education at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. As an active part of various hip hop and punk feminist communities, Weems has served in many capacities: researcher, educator, advocate, cultural worker, community organizer and auntie. Weems is the founding Director of the DIVAinstitute (Developing Intellectually Vibrant Activists). She is currently writing a book on queer dissident citizenship through digital and popular culture.
SARAH BETH WOODS is a Chicago based multidisciplinary artist. Current projects include the deconstruction and reconstruction of bath poufs and hair weaves as a means to explore, elevate, and examine the cultural meanings embedded within these objects. Woods received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BFA from Northern Illinois University. Her work has been included in shows at the University of Michigan's Work: Detroit space, A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, Bob & Roberta Smith Kunstverein at Coventry University, Coventry, England, and in Chicago at Western Exhibitions, MDW Fair, Hyde Park Art Center, and Woman Made Gallery. She currently teaches 2D Foundations at Harper College in Palatine, IL.
RACHEL ZELLARS is an attorney and PhD candidate in Education at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Her current scholarship focuses on children in slavery in Canada, critical race theory in a Canadian context, and the history of racism in public schooling in Quebec.