Visiting Speakers

Rev. Walrond currently serves as the Executive Pastor of First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, where Michael A. Walrond, Jr., is the Senior Pastor. In this capacity she has been able to expand the many administrative aspects of ministry in an urban setting.

Michael Welch is a Professor in the Criminal Justice Program at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, where his research interests include punishment, Foucault studies, and human rights. He is author of several books, including Crimes of Power & States of Impunity: The U.S. Response to Terror (2009, Rutgers University Press), Scapegoats of September 11th: Hate Crimes and State Crimes in the War on Terror (2006, Rutgers University Press), Detained: Immigration Laws and the Expanding I.N.S. Jail Complex (2002, Temple University Press). His recent book is Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism & the Pull of Punishment (2015, University of California Press).

Diane Williams is the author of several books and the founding editor of the annual literary journal NOON.

Linda Williams teaches courses on popular moving-image genres (pornography, melodrama, and “body genres” of all sorts). She has recently taught courses on Oscar Micheaux and Spike Lee, Luis Bunuel, David Lynch and Pedro Almodovar, melodrama, film theory, selected “sex genres,” and The Wire.

Joseph Winters's research interests lie at the intersection of modern religious thought, African American religious thought, and critical theory. His work contributes to recent endeavors to re-imagine and expand our understanding of black religion, black piety, and black cultural practices. Using a dialogical approach, he examines black religious and literary thought in conversation with critical theory and continental philosophy.

Michael Wood is Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus at Princeton University.  He has written books on Vladimir Nabokov, Luis Buñuel, Franz Kafka and Gabriel García Márquez, as well as The Road to Delphi, a study of the ancient and continuing allure of oracles.

Dr Raphael Woolf is a Reader in Philosophy at King's College London. He did his BA at Cambridge and his graduate study at King's, receiving his PhD in 1997. He held one-year positions at King's and Liverpool and then taught for seven years in the Harvard University philosophy department, with a sabbatical in 2002-03 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Kalima Young is a graduate student in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.