Joy James is Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Institute for Research in African--American Studies at Columbia University. She is author of Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender & Race in US Culture (1996); Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals (1996), Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics (1999). James is also editor of the Angela Y. Davis Reader (Blackwell Publishers, 1998), States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons (2000), and co--editor of Spirit, Space & Survival: African American Women In (White) Academe (1993), which received the 1994 Gustavus Myers Human Rights award. T. Denean Sharpley--Whiting is Associate Professor of French and Director of the African American Studies and Research Center at Purdue University. She is author of Frantz Fanon: Conflicts & Feminisms (1997) and Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears and Primitive Narratives in French (1999). She is co--editor of Fanon: A Critical Reader (Blackwell Publishers, 1996) and Spoils of War: Women of Color, Cultures, and Revolutions (1997), which received an honorable mention from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America in 1997.