Laura Kipnis is a cultural critic and former video artist whose work focuses on sexual politics, aesthetics, emotion, acting out, bad behavior, and various other crevices of the American psyche.
Born in Bamyan, Afghanistan, Sayed Hassan Akhlaq immigrated to Iran when his father was under prosecution by the dominant Communist Party and grew up in an immigration area, where jihad, ideological clashes, notions of stranger and countryman, the search for truth, and the conflict between ideals and the reality of actual conditions were all lived experiences.
Lauren Crain is acting director of research and learning at Scholars at Risk, an international network whose mission is to protect scholars and promote academic freedom.
Previously the Elizabeth M. Douvan Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan, Domna Stanton is a renowned scholar of seventeenth-century and early modern French studies.