Dr. Vilna Bashi Treitler is Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and a Professor of Sociology. As a sociologist and visual artist, her scholarship and art centers on the intersection of race, migration, and inequality. She is the 2020 recipient of the Cox-Johnson-Frasier award bestowed by the American Sociological Association for scholarship in service to social justice. Her book, The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions, was honored by inclusion in the Zora Canon, a list of the best 100 books written by an African American woman. Her book, Survival of the Knitted: Immigrant Social Networks in a Stratified World (Stanford University Press, 2007) was named Finalist for the Thomas-Znanecki Book. Award. She is the editor of Race in Transnational and Transracial Adoption, and co-editor with Prof. Manuela Boatca) of Dynamics of Inequalities in Global Perspective. Dr. Treitler works in oil on canvas and Masonite; and in pigment painted and fired on glass. She studied with master painter Sam Adoquei and participated in glass painting workshops both with master painter Jonathan Cooke and with J. Kenneth Leap.
Dr. Natasha Gordon-Chipembere has been a professor of African Diasporic literature for over 20-years. She has taught in classrooms from South Africa to New York to Costa Rica. She was an Associate Professor of English at the City University of New York for twelve years and a regular member of the Graduate Center’s WWOC space, where her first book project, Representation and Black womanhood: The Legacy of Sarah Baartman (Palgrave 2011), manifested. It is now required reading for first-year college students in South Africa. Gordon-Chipembere’s writing has also been published in Essence Magazine along with a monthly series, “Musings from An Afro-Costa Rican” in the Tico Times. She is a Senior Co-editor with Dr. Eduardo Paulino of the AfroLatin@ Diasporas Book Series from Palgrave, where they prioritize the voices of emerging Afro-Latin@ scholars. Her current writing focuses on slavery and the legacy of Afro-descendants in Latin America and she has just completed a historical fiction novel on Afro-descendants who lived and worked in colonial Costa Rica in the 17th century. Gordon-Chipembere is the founder and host of the annual Tengo Sed Writing Retreats in Costa Rica, an exclusive gathering of global BIPOC writers who gather in Costa Rica for a week in the mountains of Atenas at an all-inclusive wellness resort. Gordon-Chipembere was born in New York to Costa Rican/Panamanian parents and moved to Costa Rica seven years ago with her husband, and two children. She is a certified 200-hour Vinyasa Yoga Teacher and a Reiki Level II practitioner.
