Dr. Rafael Vizcaíno is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at DePaul University. His work focuses on Latin American and Caribbean philosophy, especially decolonial thought, and on the intersection between religion, politics, and secularization. He holds a BA from Northwestern University, and an MA and a PhD in Decolonial Thought from Rutgers University. Winner of the American Philosophical Association’s 2020 Essay Prize in Latin American Thought, Dr. Vizcaíno is currently working on a book-length manuscript that interprets the modern dialectics of secularization from the perspective of Latin American and Caribbean thought. His publications appear in the anthology Decolonising the University, the APA Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy, and the following journals: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Journal of World Philosophies, Comparative and Continental Philosophy, TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, The CLR James Journal, Political Theology, Philosophy and Global Affairs, Radical Philosophy Review, and LÁPIZ.

Dr. Maggie Elmore is an assistant professor of history in the Department of History at Sam Houston State University. A historian of the 20th century United States, she specializes in immigration, religion and politics, and human rights. Dr. Elmore holds BA and MA degrees from Texas Tech University, and a PhD from University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Elmore is currently the 2021-2022 Clements Fellow for the Study of Southwestern America at Southern Methodist University. Her current project, Torn Soul: The American Catholic Church and Mexican Immigrants, tells the story of the Catholic Church's fraught relationship with Mexican immigrants and its attempts to reshape U.S. immigration policy.

Gus Clemens is a freelance writer and wine columnist. His “Gus Clemens On Wine” column appears weekly in the San Angelo Standard-Times, the Abilene Reporter-News, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, and the Post Dispatch, with national distribution to Gannett/USA Today newspapers and websites nationwide. Clemens has written, collaborated on, edited, or produced more than 20 books.

Victor Hugo Mancilla is a native of Mexico City with extensive experience as a journalist, publisher, screenwriter, director, and associate producer. He is the founder and director/producer of Eravision Films, a production and film-research organization. For over 12 years, Eravision has worked in the field on special assignments in Mexico, the U.S., France, Italy, Spain, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and The Philippines. Eravision has provided services to cultural and historical projects by HBO, Green Moon Productions, International Films, Latino Smithsonian, Transcended, Mosaico, Basic E. Inc, Travel and Space Museum and Project Uplift. In addition to numerous commercial industrial films, Mancilla has served as director and/or producer of: The Forgotten Eagles (201 Productions); Noche de muertos (Eravision); Children’s Court (Lavine Productions); Our Neighborhood (A/P, Kidworks, Transcendental Media); Living with Autism and Deafness (The Willie Rose Foundation); The Catch; Buena Vista Social Rock (Eravision); and the award-winning documentary Art and Revolutions. The Forgotten Eagles, narrated by award-winning actor Edward James Olmos, tells the story of Mexico’s famed WWII 201 Squadron and was selected by the Smithsonian Institute for Best Historical Documentary in 2009. Mancilla’s works in progress include: the feature film The Lost Bullet (Ensuenos Entertainment); The Legend of the Volcanos, An Eagle Tribute Productions; An American Spy, the story of WWII spy Claire Phillips; the children’s video “Let’s Play” (Eravision); and Growing Dreams: Successes in Mexican-American Wineries. Among the many other notable artists Mancilla has worked with are Anthony Hopkins and Kelly Ho. Mancilla has two books in progress, several screenplays, and newspaper and magazine articles on Latino issues.

Elyssa Salinas-Lazarski is a doctoral student in theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Her research focuses on theology of the body and sex, integrating her Lutheran faith, and her experience as a Mexican-American and as a woman. Salinas-Lazarski is a graduate of Valparaiso University, where she studied theatre, and holds a Master of Divinity from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Alongside her studies, she is a teaching assistant, poet, and hobby baker. She has been writing poetry since age seven and continues to dabble in the art form in the midst of reading, writing, and teaching. Salinas-Lazarski's poetry and blog posts can be found at Bold Café; The Mudroom; Naked and Unashamed; and We Talk, We Listen. She lives in Chicago with her husband, two children, and two cats.

Dr. Michael E. Lee is Professor of Theology with affiliation in Fordham’s Latin American and Latino Studies Institute. Born in Miami, FL of Puerto Rican parents, he holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago (MA) and the University of Notre Dame (BA, MA, PhD). His research interests include: Roman Catholic theology, liberation theologies, Christology, spirituality, religion & politics, ecological theology, Latin American and U.S. Latinx theologies. Dr. Lee teaches courses in Roman Catholic theology, liberation theologies, Latin American and Latinx theologies, Christology, and spirituality. He has served as President of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS) and on the governing board of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA). His commentary has appeared in a wide variety of venues including The New York Times, Rolling Stone Magazine, CNN, ABC-NY, National Public Radio, The Tablet (UK), and El Faro Académico (El Salvador). He has lectured in universities across the U.S. and in Spain, Mexico, El Salvador, Belgium, and Austria.

His award-winning research includes: Revolutionary Saint: The Theological Legacy of Óscar Romero (Orbis, 2018), which was supported by a Sabbatical Grant for Researchers from the Louisville Institute and earned a Catholic Press Association Book Prize. He edited Ignacio Ellacuría: Essays on History, Liberation, and Salvation (Orbis, 2013), providing an English-speaking audience access to a collection of Ellacuría’s most substantial theological essays. Bearing the Weight of Salvation: The Soteriology of Ignacio Ellacuría (Herder & Herder, 2010) won the 2010 Hispanic Theological Initiative Book Prize, sponsored by Princeton Theological Seminary.

Dr. Lee’s scholarly activity has always been complemented by a commitment to practical community engagement. He has lived at André House, a Catholic Worker-inspired community, and engaged in liturgical music and bilingual pastoral ministry in parishes in Miami, FL, Phoenix, AZ, Chicago, IL, South Bend, IN, and New York City. He has served on the boards of international NGOs, such as CRISPAZ (Christians for Peace in El Salvador) and the Foundation for Sustainability and Peacemaking in Mesoamerica.

Angel García was the Executive Director of South Bronx People for Change, a Church-based, direct-action membership organization co-founded by Fr. Connolly. Born in Puerto Rico, García is a graduate of Princeton University and Pace University. As a long-term resident of the South Bronx and a lapsed Catholic, García has volunteered on worker cooperative projects, and social justice, environmental and political campaigns, and an affordable housing board, happily recruited by Fr. Connolly. Currently, García is a member of Sierra Club NYC and the Rainbow Garden of Life and Health, a South Bronx community garden. He has spoken about his book The Kingdom Began In Puerto Rico: Neil Connolly’s Priesthood in the South Bronx (Fordham University Press, 2021) at Fordham University’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, at the Artists and Authors Series of the Princeton University Class of 1979, and at the St. Frances de Sales Pop-up Theology Lecture Series, named after Fr. Connolly.

Abel Alvarado is a playwright, book writer/lyricist, costume designer, community programs manager, and producing artistic director at Teatro Nuevos Horizontes/New Horizons Theatre Company (TNH Productions). He conceived and wrote ARENA: A House Music-al. An award-winning costume designer, he has worked on many productions, including In The Heights; It Happened in Roswell; A Force To Be Reckoned With; An L.A. Journey; Little Red, Drunk Girl; Remembering Boyle Heights; Bad for the Community; Teatro MOZ; Mariela In The Desert, They Shoot Mexicans, Don't They?; Vietgone; Enemy of the Pueblo; Evangeline, The Queen of the Make-Believe; and Disney's Aladdin: Dual Language Edition. Alvarado’s video work includes: Wardrobe Stylist for Grammy Award nominee Gerardo Ortiz’s music video “Para qué lastimarme?" and for the web series Café Con Chisme. In 2019, he was awarded "Best Costume Design" by the NAACP Theater Awards for his costumes in Disney's Beauty and the Beast - The Broadway Musical at CASA 0101. Producing the Brown and Out IV & V Theater Festival and designing for Josefina Lopez's Real Women Have Curves at the Pasadena Playhouse are personal highlights of Alvarado’s work. Alvarado’s community work includes being a Research Assistant for Spectrum Community Services at Charles Drew University, Voter Registration Manager with Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, and Health Education Specialist with The Los Angeles LGBT Center.

Sammie Seamon is a senior at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, double-majoring in English and Spanish, with a focus in creative writing. She hopes to pursue bilingual journalism after graduation and wants to be of service to Spanish-speaking communities. She is particularly interested in the histories of her own family, which originates in Tepoxtepec, Guerrero, México, and is currently embarking on a short-story collection about life within the pueblo. As a half-white Texan latina growing up on the U.S. side of the border, she strives to reflect on her own identity and reconcile her experiences with family across borders through writing.

Gabriel García Román is a multi-disciplinary artist and craftsman who examines and decodes the politics of identity through intricate and process-based work. Born in Zacatecas, Mexico and raised in Chicago’s northwest side, García Román received his BA from The City College of New York, where he studied Studio Art, and currently resides in New York City.

His art has been acquired by the International Center of Photography and has been shown at the Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA), Galería de la Raza (San Francisco, CA), Cathedral of St. John the Divine (New York, NY), the Center for Photography at Woodstock (Woodstock, NY), BRIC (Brooklyn, NY), and numerous other institutions and galleries. García Román was a 2018 recipient of the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture’s artist grant. In 2019, he was commissioned by the Leslie-Lohman Museum to bring his Queer Icons series into the streets, where 100 Queer Icons flags were marched down the World Pride route, for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. In 2020, Garcia Roman was one of 10 artists in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for Workspace, their flagship residency program.

Dr. Kristy Nabhan-Warren is Professor and the inaugural V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair in Catholic Studies in the Departments of Religious Studies and of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. Her teaching and scholarship focus on the lived, daily experiences of American Christians and their communities, with research interests that include: American Religions; Ethnographic approaches to the study of religion; Catholic Studies; and Latinx Studies. Dr. Nabhan-Warren holds a BA in Religious Studies and Political Science, and a PhD in Religious Studies, both from Indiana University; she also holds an MA in Religious Studies from Arizona University.

Dr. Nabhan-Warren is a member of The American Academy of Religion, serving as Co-Chair of the Religion and Social Science (RSS) unit. She is the elected Vice-Chair of the Council of Graduate Studies in Religion (CGSR) and serves on the Steering Committee of the journal Spiritus: A Journal of Christianity. Dr. Nabhan-Warren is the author The Cursillo Movement in America: Catholics, Protestants, and Fourth-Day Spirituality (2013) and Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (2021), both published by The University of North Carolina Press, where she is also the creator and editor of Where Religion Lives, a book series on innovative ethnographies of religion. Her other books include The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism (New York University Press, 2005); Américan Woman: The Virgin of Guadalupe, Latinas/os, and Accompaniment (Loyola Marymount University Press, 2018); and The Oxford Handbook on Latinx Christianities in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Cleyvis Natera was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MFA from New York University. Natera is the author of the novel Neruda on the Park (Ballantine Books, 2022), and her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration, TIME, Gagosian Quarterly, The Washington Post, The Kenyon Review, Aster(ix), and Kweli Journal, among other publications. She has received honors from PEN America, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA). Natera teaches creative writing to undergraduate students at Fordham University and to graduate students at the Writer’s Foundry MFA Program at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, New York. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey.

Rev. Dr. Lakisha R. Lockhart is Assistant Professor of Christian Education at Union Presbyterian Seminary. Her research interests are in the areas of religious education; practical, liberation, and Womanist theologies; ethics and society; multiple intelligences; embodied faith and pedagogies; theological aesthetics’ theopoetics; creativity, imagination, and play. Her teaching takes seriously the benefits and necessity of play, movement, aesthetics, creative arts, and embodiment. For Dr. Lockhart, the body is a locus for doing theology and theological reflection. She holds a BA from Claflin University, an MA from Vanderbilt University, and a PhD from Boston College. With an MDiv from Wesley Theological Seminary and ordained to ministry in the non-denominational tradition, Dr. Lockhart recognizes the importance of teaching Christian education for the strengthening of the church. Her focus on practical pedagogy is not only to develop more committed and knowledgeable educators and ministers, but also more committed and knowledgeable congregants.

She has authored and co-authored numerous publications and book chapters, including United Against Racism: Churches for Change: Facilitator’s Guide (Friendship Press, 2018); “Enfleshing Catechesis Through Embodied Space” in Together Along the Way: Conversations Inspired by the Directory for Catechesis (Crossroad, 2021); “Let’s Dance: Zumba and the Imago Dei of Beautiful Black Bodies” in The Other Journal: An Intersection of Theology & Culture; and “My Wildest Dream: A Letter to My Black Son” in Religious Education. Dr. Lockhart also was featured in the Just Womanist Series for The Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership. Her awards and honors include “Millennial Womanist to Watch” from The Millennial Womanist Project, “Images of Success” from Claflin University, and a First Wornom Innovative Grant from the Religious Education Association Project.

Lupita Tonantzin Castañeda-Liles is Co-Founder & Chief Inspirational Officer, with her mother, of Becoming Mujeres a firm that helps Latina teens and their female caregivers to translate cultural expectations into opportunities. Lupita is the author of the forthcoming children’s book I Now Smile More. The book is about the positive aspects of having divorced parents. I Now Smile More not only tells the story about a young girl and her experience of having divorced parents but it also illustrates how she handles the experience. Besides writing, she also enjoys the outdoors, cooking with her abuelita, and playing with her dog. Lupita is a first-year student in high school. Her goal is to foster positivity among teens.

Dr. María Del Socorro Castañeda is Co-Founder & Chief Education Officer, with her teenage daughter Lupita, of Becoming Mujeres, a firm that helps Latina teens and their female caregivers to translate cultural expectations into opportunities. Dr. Castañeda is a sociologist and ethnographer. She holds a BS in Sociology from Santa Clara University and MA and PhD degrees in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Castañeda is a Ford Foundation Fellow and the award-winning author of Our Lady of Everyday Life: La Virgen de Guadalupe and the Catholic Imagination of Mexican Women in America (Oxford University Press, 2018). Before co-founding Becoming Mujeres, she was Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University in the Religious Studies Department. Dr. Castañeda is a sought-out speaker and expert in the areas of Mexican popular Catholicism, Our Lady of Guadalupe devotion, LatinX cultural expectations, mother-daughter communication, and teenage girls and social pressures. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, The Louisville Institute, Hispanic Theological Initiative, UC Mexus (University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States), Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and The Ignatian Institute for Jesuit Education. Her work been featured in local and national newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News and the National Catholic Reporter. She was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México and immigrated to the United States, undocumented, as a child. Dr. Castañeda’s goal is to teach Latina teens and women how to transgress oppressive gendered cultural expectations and become the mujeres they were meant to be.

The career of José Esquivel has spanned over 50 years in the graphic and fine arts in San Antonio, Texas. The Chicano socio-political movement of the 1960s and 1970s was a major influence on his early work and provided a direction that continues to this day. In 1968, Esquivel co-founded El Grupo in San Antonio, Texas. One of the earliest Chicano collectives in the country, El Grupo evolved into Con Safo in 1971. Esquivel’s work has been included in national and international exhibitions. 

Danny R. Peralta was born in The Bronx in 1978 and raised in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan. After earning a BSA in Social Studies Education from New York University, he began his work as a youth educator and community developer. While searching to expand upon his love for art and storytelling, he formally began attending black-and-white photography workshops at ICP @ THE POINT in the South Bronx and was awarded the first ever Jocelyn Benzakin Fellowship for documentary photography. He went on to earn an MFA from the International Center of Photography (ICP-Bard). With his camera focused on immediate family and community, he completed projects like Ma (winner of a 2007 BRIO Award), LOVE LIVES (a call for trauma relief in Hunts Point), and ‘Bout that Life (featured in BX200’s Bronx Now exhibit). In 2008, he returned to THE POINT CDC as Director of Arts and Education, and in 2015 became Executive Managing Director. He co-founded Peasant Podium Music in 2009, curating live musical showcases and visual art experiences for local and international artists, and was a 2019 En Foco Photography Fellow. Peralta currently lives in the Pelham Parkway section of The Bronx with his wife and two sons, who inspire his every endeavor.

John Olivares Espinoza is the author of the poetry collection The Date Fruit Elegies (Bilingual Press Review, 2008), a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. His other honors include a grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a residency at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and several Pushcart Prize nominations. His poetry has been translated into Spanish and published in Spain and Latin America. He lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife and children.

Dr. Mark D. Jordan, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, is a scholar of Christian theology, European philosophy, and gender studies. He spent his childhood in Ajijic, Mexico, where his parents lived in a community of expatriate artists. He currently teaches courses on the Western traditions of Christian soul-shaping, the relations of religion to art or literature, and the prospects for sexual ethics. Dr. Jordan holds a BA from St. John's College, and MA and PhD degrees from University of Texas at Austin. Over the last three decades, he has written extensively on sexual ethics, producing books that are widely regarded as opening important new conversations. But he has also continued to explore longstanding topics at the boundaries of philosophy and Christian theology. 

His latest book Transforming Fire (Eerdmans 2021) tells a brief history of the imagined scenes of theological education. He is at work on another manuscript about the neglected languages of queer spirituality. Dr. Jordan has received a number of grants and fellowships, including a John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays grant (Spain), and a Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology. With support from the Ford Foundation, he led a seminar on public debates about religion and sexuality for rising scholars from the United States and abroad. In 2019, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Mayra Rivera is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard University. She is the president of the American Academy of Religion. Dr. Rivera works at the intersections between continental philosophy of religion, literature, and theories of coloniality, race and gender—with particular attention to Caribbean postcolonial thought. Her research explores the relationship between discursive and material dimensions in shaping human embodiment and socio-material ecologies. She holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from University of Puerto Rico, and MTS (summa cum laude) and PhD degrees in Theological and Religious Studies from Drew University. Her most recent book, Poetics of the Flesh (Duke University Press, 2015), analyzes theological, philosophical, and political descriptions of “flesh” as metaphors for understanding how social discourses materialize in human bodies. Her book The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Westminster John Knox Press, 2007) explores the relationship between models of divine otherness and ideas about interhuman difference. She is also co-editor, with Stephen Moore, of Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology (Fordham Press, 2010) and, with Catherine Keller and Michael Nausner, of Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (Chalice Press, 2004). Dr. Rivera is currently working on a project that explores the relationships between coloniality and climate change through Caribbean thought.