» Scott Barton earned a Ph.D. in Food Studies with a focused on the intersection of secular and sacred cuisine as a marker of ethnic and cultural identity in Northeastern Brazil, using documentary film and written text. Grant funding from the Council on Culture and Media, CLACS, Steinhardt’s Dean’s Grant and the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, NY Culinary Historians, Julia Child Foundation, André and Simone Soltner Foundation, the American Philosophical Society and the Ruth Landes Foundation have financed Scott’s research. He is also a professional chef.

» Myron M. Beasley, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of American Studies at Bates College, where he also serves on the committee of Gender and Sexuality Studies. His ethnographic research includes exploring the intersection of cultural politics, material & visual culture and social change. He has been awarded fellowships and grants by the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ruth Landes Award from the Reed Foundation and the Rabkin Foundation. His ethnographic writing about Africana Cultural Politics, Contemporary Art, Material Culture and cultural engagement has appeared in many academic journals. He is also an international curator. myronbeasley.com

» Rebekah Bryer is a doctoral student in the Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama program at Northwestern University. Her research centers on the intersection of performance and public memory, with her dissertation project focusing on the connections between performance, interpretation, and citizenship at sites of public commemoration in the United States. Prior to Northwestern, she received a M.A. in History from Northeastern University and a B.A. in History and Theatre from Wheaton College (MA). In her life before academia, she worked in audience services and stage management at various companies in Massachusetts, New York, and her home state of Maine.

» Jop Blom, Ph.D., is a Physical Therapist from Winthrop, Maine. He is an amateur photographer with an interest in nature and portraiture.

» Danielle M. Conway is Dean & Donald J. Farage Professor of Law, Pennsylvania State University’s Dickinson School of Law. From 2015-2019, she was Dean & Professor of Law, University of Maine School of Law. Dean Conway was the inaugural Michael J. Marks Distinguished Professor of Business Law at the University of Hawai?i at Manoa, William S. Richardson School of Law. She is a member of the American Law Institute. Dean Conway was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Australia; as well, she retired from the U.S. Army in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

» Dean Crawford is the author of The Lay of the Land, Shark, and co-author of Sharks in the Arts: From Feared to Revered. He’s an emeritus professor at Vassar College, where he taught in the English Department for 29 years.

» Jenna Crowder is a writer and artist. She is the Founding Editor of The Chart, a Maine-based online arts journal that explores the specificity of regional perspectives in national conversations. Jenna's practice extends across installation, participatory practice, printmaking, and curation to consider the convergence of written language and visual aesthetics. Her writing has recently appeared in Temporary Art Review, The Rib, and the anthology Enter Rural Scene from Wash and Fold Press.

» Peter Goldman, Ph.D., J.D., was born in New York and educated in New England. He lived in the desert Southwest for over twenty-five years before moving to Maine in late 2017. Trained originally as a scientist, these days he practices law. On occasion he has the good fortune to watch the law and justice coincide.

» Darra Goldstein, Ph.D., is Founding Editor of Gastronomica (James Beard Award Winner), and author of five award-winning cookbooks. She's the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita, at Williams College.

» Patricia M. Hager, M.F.A., teaches writing in the Honors Program and directs the Writing Center at The University of Southern Maine. In her journalistic and non-fiction writing, her professional editing, and in her classroom, she understands that we are all made of stories, and she does her best to release those stories into the world.

» Yoon Soo Lee is Professor of Art and Design at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her practice moves around three core areas of study: the art of pedagogy, how to work in dialogue cross-discipline, and how to create art and design that is based on self-knowledge. She has presentated at the AIGA Educators Conference, UCDA Design Educators Conference and the Cognitive Science Society. Her research is supported with grants from the National Institute of Health. Her work is published in Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal and Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies. Yoon Soo studied at Seoul National University where she received her BFA and MFA, and she also studied at Western Michigan University where she received her second MFA in graphic design.

» Kate McBrien, M.A., serves as the Chief Curator and Director of Public Engagement for the Maine Historical Society. She directed the creation of Maine Historic Society’s Baskets from the Dawnland and 400 Years of New Mainers exhibitions and has directed or curated fourteen exhibits at MHS. Previously, as a curator at the Maine State Museum, Kate curated the exhibition Malaga Island, Fragmented Lives, which won the 2013 AASLH Award of Merit for exhibition excellence. Kate serves on the Board of Directors for the New England Museum Association and speaks regularly about the museum field.

» Kate McMahon, Ph.D., is a museum specialist at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Born and raised in Maine, she attended the University of Southern Maine for both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She completed her Ph.D. in History at Howard University in May 2017. Her past research interests include African American communities in northern New England from the colonial period through 1865. Her master's thesis at the University of Southern Maine (2012) examined the historic African American community of Peterborough in Warren, Maine. She has also been involved in the Malaga Island archaeology project. Her 2013 article in Material Culture Review, "The Use of Material Culture and Recovering Black Maine," focused on how the archaeological project has been a bridge between academics and the descendant community.

» Mary Pols grew up in Brunswick, Maine. After two decades as a newspaper woman and movie critic in California, she returned to the state in 2010 where she has been a feature writer for five years at the Portland Press Herald. She has been a film critic for Time and her literary criticism appears regularly in publications such as People Magazine and The New York Times. A former Knight Fellow at Stanford, she holds degrees from Duke University and the University of California Berkeley. In 2018 Pols was a resident at the Hewnoak Artist Colony. She is working on a collection of linked stories set in Maine.

» Imani Roach is a Philadelphia-based scholar, visual artist, and musician. Across disciplines, her interests include the surveillance, consumption and containment of black emotion, vulnerability and entitlement practices in urban space, gender and the public/private divide, and aging bodies in the American imaginary. She is the former managing editor of Artblog (an online journal for local arts criticism), a member at Vox Populi gallery and collective, a co-founder of The Lonely Painter Project (a bi-coastal performance collaborative), and an instructor at the University of the Arts, where she teaches the art of Africa and the black diaspora. She is also a doctoral candidate at Harvard University, writing on the first generation of black South African photojournalists under Apartheid. She performs regularly as a vocalist in the soul, folk and jazz idioms. Her writing has appeared in both Artblog and Guernica magazines.

» Robert M. Sanford, Ph.D., is Professor of Environmental Science & Policy and Chair of the Department of Environmental Science & Policy at the University of Southern Maine. He has a B.A. in Anthropology from SUNY Collage at Potsdam and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Science from SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry at Syracuse. His fields are environmental planning and environmental impact assessment and he is a Registered Professional Archaeologist and has worked with Professor Nathan Hamilton on the archaeology of Malaga Island.

» Martha Schnee is an artist, educator, and mover based in Portland, Maine. Rooted in close looking, critical ethnography, and cross-disciplinary experimentation, her artistic practice explores places and excavates memory. She holds an Honors B.A. in American Cultural Studies from Bates College. Her thesis research work focused on Marfa, TX, and combined historic analysis, cultural ethnography, creative nonfiction writing, photography, and critical theory to explore gentrification. She has a rigorous professional practice in arts education, holding positions at the Portland Museum of Art and SPACE Gallery in teen education and outreach, and as a co-facilitator of SPELL (South Portland Experimental Language League) at the Living Room Dance Collective. Her photography work has appeared in shows and publications nationally and internationally.

» Beverly Werber is a public policy strategist. Born, raised and educated in Massachusetts, she lived 30-plus years in the Los Angeles area before moving to Tucson in 2009. She recently came home to New England, settling in Portland. The community of people and the beauty of place drew her to Maine. The arts, particularly Native American arts, tie her to her new home.

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Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies (issn: 1557-2935)

editor-in-chief: Michael LeVan (Washington State University, Vancouver)
managing editor: Greg Langner (Louisiana State University)
the city editor: Daniel Makagon (DePaul University)
digital horizons editors: Craig Gingrich-Philbrook (Southern Illinois University) and Daniel (Jake) Simmons
   (Missouri State University)
performance & pedagogy editor: Christopher J. McRae (University of South Florida)
book review editor: Christopher J. McRae (University of South Florida)

banner image (setting) by Jop Blom; issue image (dessert) by Myron M. Beasley