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» Michaela Frischherz (she/her) is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Towson University. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and holds a M.A. in Cultural Analysis from the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Michaela specializes in cultural and rhetorical criticism with an emphasis on queer feminist ways of knowing. Guided by an ethic of pleasure activism, her research focuses on the meaning-making practices forged by women and other historically disenfranchised genders communicating pleasure under the duress of the relations of power. Michaela teaches rhetorical theory and criticism, sexual communication, research methods, queer/lgbt communication studies, and a study abroad experience on the concept of social permissiveness in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

» Desirée Rowe received their interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. She is currently a professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Towson University. Desirée's research digs into the tangible embodied interactions of our cruel fantasies of life. Through queer performance ethnography, arts-based methods, and critical qualitative interventions her investigations center on negativity in two ways. First, through reparative negativity (a la Sedgwick) that allows space for re-framing and revisioning institutions and institutional life. Second, through embracing a contradictory negativity, one that is an unruly anti-productive or unwell negativity. She has published articles in Women and Language, Text and Performance Quarterly, Cultural Studies <-> Critical Methodologies, Rethinking History: A Journal of Theory and Practice, Qualitative Inquiry, Western Journal of Communication Studies, and many book chapters. In 2019 she was named a Fulbright Scholar to Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. She currently serves as the associate editor of the Performance Space in Text and Performance Quarterly.

» Michael Tristano Jr. (he/him) is assistant professor and director of cultural studies at Towson University. A performance ethnographer, his work is at the intersection of performance studies, queer studies, and critical/cultural communication studies. Michael's research focuses on the material conditions of queer and trans people of color and the means by which queer and trans communities of color engage in worldmaking practices and perform joy in light of oppressive conditions. Michael labors and lives on the unceded ancestral homelands of the Piscataway and Susquehannock peoples. He is currently an associate editor of Text & Performance Quarterly. His recent work can be found in QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, Women's Studies in Communication, Sexualities, Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, and Text & Performance Quarterly. Michael unequivocally supports the Palestinian Liberation movement and stands in solidarity with all who resist, refuse, and rebel against the genocide of the Palestinian people. He calls upon all of us to halt the gears of empire.