Reading the Crisis: Gail Lewis & Roderick Ferguson

Gail has written, but is trying to become a writer; Gail likes to speak, but is still seeking her tonalities; Gail sometimes feels lonely, inept and scared; but Gail is brought into being in and by the company, care and joy of black/women of colour feminisms and queer knowings and livings. 

Roderick A. Ferguson is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of One-Dimensional Queer (Polity, 2019), We Demand: The University and Student Protests (University of California, 2017), The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference(University of Minnesota, 2012), and Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (University of Minnesota, 2004). He is the co-editor with Grace Hong of the anthology Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization (Duke University, 2011). He is also co-editor with Erica Edwards and Jeffrey Ogbar of Keywords of African American Studies (NYU, 2018). He is the 2020 recipient of the Kessler Award from the Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS). 

Aasiya Lodhi is a Senior Lecturer in Media at the University of Westminster. Her research is focused on empire and twentieth-century British history. She led an AHRC-funded project on gender, race, and visibility tied to the BBC’s centenary, and she is currently writing a book on BBC Radio, racial liberalism, and the politics of voice in post-war Britain. Aasiya is a former BBC radio producer and journalist.