<h4>Lili is a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley working on Milton and seventeenth-century theories of eating and reading. She tweets at <a href="https://twitter.com/Millicentsomer">@millicentsomer</a>, blogs at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.excrementalvirtue.com/">Excremental Virtue</a>, and writes TV criticism over at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.deartelevision.wordpress.com/">Dear Television</a>&nbsp;along with Jane Hu, Phillip Maciak and Evan Kindley. You can sometimes find her at The Awl, The Hairpin, and The New Inquiry. </h4>

Lili Loofbourow

<h4>Daphne A. Brooks is professor of African American Studies, Theater Studies, and American Studies at Yale University where she teaches courses on black literature and culture, performance studies, sound studies, and black feminist theory. She is the author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910 (Duke UP, 2006) and Jeff Buckley’s Grace (Continuum, 2005), and the forthcoming Subterranean Blues: Black Women Sound Modernity (Harvard UP).</h4>

Daphne A. Brooks

Jesse McCarthy is an assistant professor in the departments of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His writing has appeared in The Nation, n+1, Dissent, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, and in the magazine The Point where he is also an editor. His first book, Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?, a collection of essays, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton &amp; Co. in spring 2021. Photo by Nina Sparling.

Jesse McCarthy

Sarah Marshall&nbsp;is the co-host of the popular modern history podcast You’re Wrong About, which has been highlighted in The New Yorker, The Guardian,&nbsp;and&nbsp;Time&nbsp;magazine. Her writing has appeared in the&nbsp;Believer, Buzzfeed,&nbsp;and the true crime collection&nbsp;Unspeakable Acts.

Sarah Marshall

Lexis-Olivier Ray&nbsp;is&nbsp;a multimedia investigative staff reporter at the James Beard Award winning publication,&nbsp;L.A. TACO, as well as a filmmaker and artist. Based in Los Angeles, Ray has previously contributed to&nbsp;Men’s Health&nbsp;Magazine, the&nbsp;L.A. Times,&nbsp;SFGATE,&nbsp;LAist,&nbsp;and&nbsp;KCET. Ray was a 2020 Center For Health Journalism Data Fellow and 2020 Ruben Salazar Awards finalist.

Lexis-Olivier Ray

Semipublic Intellectual Sessions: “Where’s ‘the Discourse’?”

"Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors." — Simone Weil

Cultural Studies

Lexis-Olivier Ray&nbsp;is&nbsp;a multimedia investigative staff reporter at the James Beard Award winning publication,&nbsp;L.A. TACO, as well as a filmmaker and artist. Based in Los Angeles, Ray has previously contributed to&nbsp;Men’s Health&nbsp;Magazine, the&nbsp;L.A. Times,&nbsp;SFGATE,&nbsp;LAist,&nbsp;and&nbsp;KCET. Ray was a 2020 Center For Health Journalism Data Fellow and 2020 Ruben Salazar Awards finalist.