March 18, 2025
Professor Bonilla’s research examines the ideologies and activism of communists of color from the 1960s to the present. He explores how activists of different racial and ethnic backgrounds utilized the theories around Marxism for organizing laborers, students, and communities in their fights against global imperialism, capitalism, sexism, and racism. He explores the polemical writings and practical activism of a multiracial Communist Party known as the League of Revolutionary Struggle in areas such as labor, student activism, and electoral politics. Professor Bonilla has published work on the interconnections of social movements and policing by seeing how communists were politically persecuted at the hands of policing agencies against communists during the global Cold War. He is currently revising his dissertation to a book manuscript tentatively titled Homegrown Communists in the Age of Reagan: Multi-Racial Politics and Socialist Revolution that sits at the intersection of Latinx, African American, and Asian American social movement histories.
Devin is an Associate Professor in the department of Sociology, Urban Studies, and Anthropology, the Faculty Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, and the Director of the Gender and Sexuality Studies program at Saint Peter’s University in Jersey City, NJ. She is a graduate of the Critical Social-Personality Psychology doctoral program at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Dr. Heyward has taught a number of interdisciplinary courses including Global Feminism, Women in a Changing Urban World, Urban Anthropology, and the Sociology of Intimacy. Her research focuses on racial identity development over the lifespan and how it is influenced by chosen experiences, such as course enrollment and genetic ancestry testing. Dr. Heyward’s most recent project uses a Youth Participatory Action Research (Y-PAR) framework to develop a well-being survey and toolkit for and by Black youth and young adults. She currently serves as the Vice Chair for the Bronx Community Research Review Board (BxCRRB), an organization dedicated to the ethical inclusion of Bronx residents in medical and social research throughout the borough.
I am an historian of twentieth and twenty-first century Latin American and Latinx History. My research interest focuses on community organizing, Central American revolutions, and immigrant activism. I am currently working on a manuscript that examines how Salvadoran community organizers in both El Salvador and the diaspora have used popular education to create spaces of belonging when state systems and narratives have neglected to do so. Drawing on more than thirty oral histories and archival resources, I demonstrate how Salvadorans used popular education as a tool for resistance against state sanctioned violence that cut across national boundaries. The manuscript ultimately demonstrates how Salvadorans understood and rearticulated a repertoire of organizing tools from their homeland, based on religious and revolutionary values, to challenge hegemonic, racist, and xenophobic systemic structures that impede social justice. My work has been supported in part by Indiana University’s History Department, the University Graduate School at Indiana University, the American Historical Association, and the Conference of Latin American History. I have also received various fellowships and grants including the Ford Dissertation Fellowship (declined), the Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellowship, and the Andres Torres Paper Series Award.
Dr. Tsedale M. Melaku is a Sociologist, Assistant Professor of Management at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College (CUNY), and Author of You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism (2019). You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer reflects the emphasis of her scholarly interests in race, gender, class, workplace inequities, systemic racism, intersectionality, organizations and diversity. She earned a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Sociology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and a B.A. in Sociology and Africana Studies from New York University. Her focus is on how race and gender affect advancement in traditionally white institutional spaces, and how white racial framing and systemic gendered racism play a critical role in the experiences of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), and more specifically, BIPOC women in organizations