Author Celebration Committee


English | Español | Français


Functions of the Author Celebration Committee:

  • Introduce new scholarship of the CSA membership to a wide cross-section of interests
  • Celebrate publication milestones of our members and associates
  • Bring awareness to the achievements of individual authors
  • Manage the call for panels/or proposals for the annual conference, that includes, assuming responsibility for evaluating and approving submissions
  • Work in collaboration with the Literary Salon Committee where appropriate to ensure efficient and effective representation of the interests of members and associates

Committee Members

Kamille Gentles PeartKamille Gentles-Peart, Ph.D., Co-Chair

Kamille Gentles-Peart is professor of Communication Studies at Roger Williams University. Her scholarship looks at the ways in which anti-black racism is perpetrated on and through the bodies of Black Caribbean women and their strategies for liberation. She has written and edited several books, including Romance With Voluptuousness: Caribbean Women and Thick Bodies in the U.S., which looks at the challenges that Black women from the Caribbean face when they pursue curvy bodies in the U.S. Her work has also appeared in academic journals such as Women’s Studies Quarterly, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Feminism and Psychology. She co-founded the Collaborative for the Research on Black Women and Girls, which is committed to restoring and healing Black women and girls globally. She is also a faculty fellow at the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) where she co-created  the North Star Collective, a regional consortium to promote reparative justice in higher education institutions in New England and uplift and nourish BIPOC faculty.

E-mail: kgentles-peart@rwu.edu

Sheri K. LewisSheri 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.