Meena Alexander is a poet and critic. Author of the acclaimed Fault Lines and Shock of Arrival, Alexander has published several volumes of poetry, a book of memoirs, novels, and literary criticism. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies of poetry and prose. She has lectured in universities in India and the United States since 1979, and is currently Professor of English at Hunter College, City University of New York as well teaching in the writing program at Columbia University.

Carol Becker is Professor of Liberal Arts at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is also Dean of the Faculty. She is a cultural critic and author of The Invisible Drama: Women and the Anxiety of Change and Zones of Contention: Essays on Art, Institutions, Gender and Anxiety. She has also edited The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, and Social Responsibility and The Artist in Society: Rights, Roles, Responsibilities.

Francesco Bonami is North American editor of Flash Art International. He has curated several exhibitions, including a section of ’Aperto 93’ of the Venice Biennale (1993), Site Santa Fe (1996), and ’Loco-Motion: Contemporary Art at the Borders Cinema’ in conjunction with the opening of the 47th Venice Biennale. He is the author of several articles in international art publications and has written essays for the catalogues of the Venice and Johannesburg Biennales. His book, Echoes: Contemporary Art at the Age of Endless Conclusions, has recently been published by The Monacelli Press (New York).

Catherine David is the Artistic Director at documenta X 1997 in Kassel. She was previously Curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou (Paris), Professor at the Ecole du Louvre and Curator at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume (Paris). She has curated Stan Douglas: Monodramas and Television Spots (Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1991); Hélio Oiticia (Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1992); and Jeff Wall (Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1995).

Manthia Diawara is Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Africana Studies Programme at New York University. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Oxford University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is editor of Black American Cinema: Aesthetics and Spectatorship (1993) and author of African Cinema: Politics and Culture (1992). He has published in various journals including, Diacritic, Social Text, Screen and Présence Africaine. He is the co-director with Ngûgî wa Thiong’o of Sembène Ousmane: The Making of African Cinema, and has made Rouch in Reverse, a film documentary on Jean Rouch.

Okwui Enwezor is the Artistic Director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale 1997. He is a poet, critic, curator, and publisher/founding editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Enwezor’s recent essays have appeared in numerous international exhibition catalogues and books, including Future, Past, Present (47th Venice Biennale) and Inklusion/Exklusion (Steiriescher Herbst, Graz, Austria). He is a regular contributor to Flash Art, Frieze, Index on Censorship, International Review of African-American Art, Siksi and Third Text. Enwezor’s recent curatorial credits include In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present (Guggenheim Museum, New York), Modern Life (Aljira Centre for Contemporary Art in conjunction with the Newark Musuem) and New Visions: Six Contemporary African Artists (Zora Neale Hurston National Art Museum, Eatonville, Florida).

Lorna Ferguson was Director of Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg, prior to initiating and co-ordinating the first Johannesburg Biennial in 1995. She is currently an independent art critic and curator, and is curating the section devoted to Africa at the 24th Bienal de São Paulo in 1998.

Jean Fisher is editor of the influential art journal, Third Text. She is an artist and writer, and has lectured around the world on contemporary cultures. Her writings have appeared in numerous publications including Art Forum and Art in America. A former teacher at Goldsmiths College (London), Fisher now teaches at the Jan van Eyck Akademie (Maastricht).

June Givanni is a freelance film programmer and researcher, currently based in Britain. For the last seven years she has worked at the British Film Institute where she headed the African Caribbean Film Unit. Givanni organised the Screen Griots programme of screening, distribution and publishing projects as part of the Africa95 festival of Art and Culture in the UK. She was director of the Africa and the History of Cinematic Ideas Conference organised as part of Screen Griots, and is editor of the forthcoming BFI publication reporting on the conference. Givanni is founder editor of the quarterly magazine, The Black Film Bulletin. Givanni is a board and founder member of the Caribbean Film and Video Federation.

Salah Hassan is Assistant Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture in the Africana Studies and Research Centre at Cornell University. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty, he taught at the SUNY (Buffalo), University of Pennsylvania and the College of Fine and Applied Art (Khartoum). Hassan is the author of Art and Islamic Literacy Among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria (1992), co-author of Seven Stories About Modern African Art (1995), co-editor of The Muse of Modernity: Essays on Culture as Development in Africa (1996), and editor and co- author of Gendered Visions: The Art of Contemporary African Women Artists (forthcoming, 1997).

Andreas Huyssen is Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He co- founder and editor of New German Critique, and serves on the editorial boards of Critical Studies, Germanic Review and October. He is the author of After the Great Divide (1986) and Twilight Memories (1995), both of which use contemporary cultural and political developments in the New Germany as a frame for understanding concepts of nationalism and the role of the intellectual, as well as questions around literature, art, memory and temporality in postmodern cultures and societies.

Ashraf Jamal is an essayist, playwright and novelist. He is the author of Love Themes from the Wilderness (1996), the co-author of Art in South Africa: The Future Present (1996) and has just completed an extended essay on Norman Catherine for a book being published by the Goodman Gallery in 1998.

Isaac Julien is a British filmmaker who helped found the Sankofa Film and Video Collective in London in the early 1980s. His work addresses a range of issues relating to the representation of race and gay sexuality, and he has published several articles in the field of film and postcolonial theory. His work includes a short film, The Attendant (1993), a two- part documentary Black and White in Colour (1992), Young Soul Rebels (1991), Looking for Langston (1989), and The Passion of Remembrance (1986). He is the author of Diary of a Young Soul Rebel (1991).

Vasif Kortun is Director of the Centre for Curatorial Studies Museum at Bard College. He is the former director and chief curator of the 3rd Istanbul Biennale (1992). Kortun will return to Istanbul at the end of 1997 to start a contemporary art institute. He is the author of numerous catalogue essays, exhibition reviews and other articles on contemporary visual arts. Upcoming curatorial projects include a section of the Sao Paulo Biennale (1998) and a project at Apex Art, C.P. in New York (1999).

Sarat Maharaj teaches Art History at Goldsmiths College, University of London. A well-known authority on Modernism, he has also written and made presentations on other aspects of contemporary art. He was major contributor to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition ’Interrogating Identity’ at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, and most recently, a speaker at the forum on modernisms at the House of World Cultures in Berlin.

Mahmood Mamdani is A.C. Jordan Professor of African Studies and the Director of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town. He has taught at Makerere, his home university, as well as the University of Dar-es-Salaam. He was the Director of the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala. Mamdani is author of Citizen and Subject, Politics and Class Formation in Uganda, and The Myth of Population Control. Mamdani has been honoured with membership of the African Academy of Sciences. Ivan May is Assistant General Manager and head of Strategic and Tactical Marketing at Nedcor Bank. He is also one of the administrators of the Arts and Culture Trust.

Achille Mbembe is Executive Secretary of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in Dakar, Senegal. Prior to taking up this position Dr Mbembe was Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University. Mbembe has published a number of book, including La Naissance du Maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun, 1920-1960 (1996) and Le Politique par le Bas (with J.F. Bayart and C. Toulabor, 1991). His Provisional Notes on the Postcolony is in press. Mbembe’s numerous articles and essays have appeared in journal such as Africa, Journal of African History, and Public Culture.

Kobena Mercer is Visiting Professor in the Africana Studies Programme at New York University. Previously, he was Assistant Professor in the Arts and History of Consciousness Programs at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (1994) and a recent monograph on Keith Piper, Relocating the Remains (1997). Mercer has lectured and published widely on issues of sexuality, identity and the visual arts of the diaspora.
Armin Medosch is a writer, media artist and curator. He is the co-initiator of ’Stubnitz Art-Space-Ship’, as well as exhibition and conference organizer of ’Telepolis - The Interactive and Networked City’ (Luxembourg, 1995). He is currently living in London and working as editor for Telepolis - Magazine of NetCulture (http://www.heise.de/tp).

Salem Mekuria is an independent film producer, writer and director from Ethopia, currently based in Boston. She is also an Assistant Professor of Art at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. For a number of years, she has worked with NOVA, Public Television’s premier science documentary series, and with numerous international film productions focusing on issues of African women and development.

Charles Merewether is currently curator of Spanish and Portuguese Language Cultures and Contemporary Art at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. He is the author of Art and Social Commitment: An End to the City of Dreams 1931-1948 (1984) and What Remains: Ana Mendieta (forthcoming). He is also presently writing a book on art and the archive. Merewether has written extensively on the reconfiguration of modernism and the avant-garde in non- European cultures, especially in Latin America, on violence and the aesthetics of redemption, and more recently, on cultural memory and movements.

Gerardo Mosquera is an art critic, lecturer, curator, historian and currently Curator at The New Museum for Contemporary Art (New York). He is a founder of the Havana Biennale and a member of the curatorial team for the Havana Biennale in 1984, 1986 and 1989. Mosquera was head of the Department of Research at the Centre Wilfredo Lam in Havana. He is the author of Contracandela (1995), El Diseno se Definio en Octubre (1989), Con la Primera Cantante (1984) and Exploraciones en la Plastica Cubana (1983), as well as having published articles, reviews and essays in Aperture, Art and Text, Art Journal, Atlantica, Artforum, Oxford Art Journal and Third Text.

Taslima Nasrin is an exiled Bangladeshi poet and novelist currently living in Sweden. After qualifying as a medical doctor, she worked in family planning clinics and gynaecology departments in public hospitals in Bangladesh from 1985 to 1993. Nasrin has published 17 books of poetry, novels, essays, short stories. Lajja, banned by the Bangladeshi government for its description of religious persecution by Muslim fundamentalists, has been published in 22 languages. The issuing of a fatwa against Nasrin by Muslim fundamentalists, combined with an arrest warrant, forced Nasrin underground. She has been living in exile since August 1994.

Lewis Nkosi teaches in the Department of English at the University of Wyoming. His documentary on African writers first introduced American audiences to modern African literature in the 1960s. Nkosi is author of a collection of essays, Home and Exile, a novel, Mating Birds (an American Critics Circle Choice and a New York Times Book of the Week), and a study of African literature, Tasks and Masks. He is currently Visiting Leverhulme Professor at the University of London at Queen Mary and Westfield English and Drama Department.

Naín Nómez is Professor of Chilean and Latin American Literature at the University of Santiago in Chile. He has also taught at the University of Toronto (Canada), Queen’s University at Kingston (Canada) and California State University (Long Beach, USA). Nómez is the author of several books on Chilean poets, including Pablo de Rokha y Pablo Nerude: La Escritura Total (1992), and has published a number of volumes of his own poetry, including Burning Bridges (1987) and El Fuego va Borrando (1989). His work has also been included in Antologia Critica de la Poesia Chilena: Tomo I (1997), the first part of a 4-volume project on 100 years of Chilean poetry.

John Noyes is Professor of Theory of Literature at the University of Cape Town. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and a Visiting Fellow at Cornell University. Noyes is author of Colonial Space (1992) and The Mastery of Submission: Inventions of Masochism (1997).

Olu Oguibe is Stuart Golding Chair in African Art at the University of South Florida, Tampa. He is co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (New York), Arts and Culture Editor for Africa World Review (London), and a member of the International Advisory Council of Third Text (London). His most recent books include Uzo Egonu: An African Artist in the West (1995) and The Battle for South Africa’s Mind (with Pitika Ntuli, 1994). Oguibe has written short essays and reviews for a number of journals, including African Arts, African Commentary, Atlantica, Nka, Research in African Literatures, and Third Text.

Andries Oliphant is a poet, fiction writer, publisher, literary and cultural theorist and critic. He has been editor of Ravan Press and Staffrider magazine. Oliphant chaired the Arts and Culture Task Group appointed by the Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology to formulate a new Arts, Culture and Heritage policy for South Africa. He was a member of the writing team for the White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage. He is now chairperson of the Arts and Culture Trust of the President. His publications include Culture and Empowerment: Writings, Art and Photography from the Zabalaza Festival (1993); The Change of Seasons and Other Stories (1995) and Bringing Cinderella to the Ball: Papers Presented at a Conference on Arts and Culture in the New South Africa (1995). He currently lectures in Theory of Literature at the University of South Africa.

Kole Omotoso is Professor of English at the University of the Western Cape. He has been associate editor of Ch’Indaba Magazine and literary editor of Afriscope. He was involved in the founding of the Union of Writers of the African Peoples in Accra, Ghana, as well as the establishment of the Association of Nigerian Authors, of which he was the first general secretary and later president. Omotoso has been a Visiting Professor in both the Department of English Studies at the University of Stirling, and the English Department of the National University of Lesotho. He has published five novels, a collection of short stories, two plays and a large body of critical work.

Howardena Pindell is a New York-based artist, critic and curator. She is a Professor in the Department of Art at SUNY, Stony Brook, and has been a Visiting Professor at Yale University’s School of Art as well as Associate Curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Pindell’s work has been exhibited at Corcoran Museum (Washington, DC), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Skoto Gallery (New York) and Rush Gallery (New York). She has received two NEA grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Pindell has published articles in a variety of international publications including Art Journal, New Art Examiner and Third Text, and a collection of her writings and paintings, entitled The Heart of the Question, has just been published by Midmarch Art Press.

Richard Powell is Chair and Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Art at Duke University (Durham, North Carolina). He is the author of several books in the field of African diasporal arts, including The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism (1989), Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (1991) and Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century (1997). Powell has also organised several major exhibitions for the Studio Museum in Harlem, Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Damien Pwono is Senior Programme Advisor (Arts and Humanities) at the Rockefeller Foundation.

Colin Richards is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts at Wits University. Richards is a curator and writer who, in addition to serving as a consultant for international exhibitions on South African art, has recently co-curated Taking Liberties: The Body Politic (Africus Johannesburg Biennale 1995), and Siyawela: Love, Loss and Liberation in Art from South Africa (Birmingham City Museum, 1995).

Saskia Sassen is Professor in the Department of Urban Planning, as well as the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Her most recent books are The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (1991), Cities in a World Economy (1994) and Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalisation, (1996).Sassen is currently a Research Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences in Stanford, California.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, New York. Her books include Myself Must I Remake (1974), In Other Worlds (1987), The Post-Colonial Critic (1988), Outside in the Teaching Machine (1994), and A Spivak Reader (1996). Don’t Call Me Postcolonial: From Kant to Kawakubo will be published this year. She is active in rural and Aboriginal literacy in Bangladesh and India.

Carol Steinberg is Director (Arts and Culture) at the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, Pretoria. Ravi Sundaram is a Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, India. He was previously a Research Associate at the Fernand Braudel Centre, Bingamtom University. Sundaram’s forthcoming book, Time, Modernity and Nationalism, focuses on Third World radical social movements as well as the nationalist heritage and its engagement with Western modernity. His work at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies looks at the intersection of technocultures, globalisation and the urban experience in contemporary India.

Gilane Tawadros is Director of the Institute of International Visual Arts in London. Over the past seven years she has worked in a number of art and education institutions, including The Photographers’ Gallery and the Hayward Gallery in London where she managed the visual art education programmes. Tawadros has written and lectured widely on contemporary art and is a member of the editorial and advisory board of Third Text. Her forthcoming book on Sonia Boyce is due to be published in 1997 by Kala Press.

Pauline Terreehorst writes for the Dutch newspaper de Volkskorant. She has been chief editor of Skrien, film critic for Groene Amsterdammer and taught film theory at the University of Nijmegen. She has also published a number of books, including There, Then, Here: The Films of Johan van der Keuken and Modus: About People, Fashion and Life.

Els van der Plas is a curator, critic and art historian. She is currently Director of the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development in the Netherlands, an organisation which stimulates and supports cultural activities in Asia, Latin America and particularly Africa. Van der Plas is the former Director of the Gate Foundation in Amsterdam, an organisation focusing on intercultural exchange in contemporary art.

Peter Wollen is Professor of Film Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, Raiding the Ice Box: Reflections on Twentieth Century Culture, and Visual Display. With Laura Mulvey, he has co-directed Penthesilea, Riddles of the Sphinx and The Bad Sister. His most recent solo film was Friendship’s Death. Wollen has curated international art exhibitions on Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti, and the Situationist International.

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