Author Celebration Committee

Karen Flynn, Ph.D., Co-Chair

Karen Flynn, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was selected as the first Terrance & Karyn Holm Endowed Professor.

Flynn, who will also serve as director of the Midwest Nursing History Research Center – which is housed at UIC Nursing.

E-mail: authorcelebrationcsa@gmail.com

Sheri K. Lewis, Co-Chair

Sheri K. Lewis is a native of Chicago’s South side. Remaining committed to producing culturally relevant scholarship she studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in Gender and Women Studies and is currently a doctoral candidate in Educational Policy Studies and Organizational Leadership.  Her research focuses on the cross cultural relationship between black girlhood and popular culture and the ways in which black girls craft identity particularly in Chicago and Barbados. For several years has co organized spaces for youth and women of color focusing on reproductive justice, Hip Hop, intersectionality and love pedagogies.  She dreams of a Black girl utopia as she creatively works to facilitate pedagogical spaces promoting imagination, critical thinking, and identity politics. Sheri is a firm believer in speaking truth to power and remains motivated in demonstrating the social, cultural and political power within Black girlhood.