Elizabeth Marchant is an Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Comparative Literature at UCLA. She also serves on the Faculty Advisory Committees for the interdisciplinary programs in Latin American Studies and University Studies. Professor Marchant is the author of Critical Acts: Latin American Women and Cultural Criticism (University Press of Florida, 1999). She co-edited Comparative Perspectives on the Black Atlantic, a special issue of Comparative Literature Studies (2012). In 2005, she was a recipient of the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award. She has also taught at UCSB, Brandeis University, NYU, and Stanford. At UCLA, she has served as the Chair and Graduate Vice-Chair of the Gender Studies Department, Director of the Brazil Travel Study Program, and Chair of the Latin American Studies Program on Brazil. Professor Marchant currently is completing a book entitled, Brazil and the Black Atlantic: Cultural Inclusion and Citizenship, which examines contemporary Afro-Brazilian expressive culture as a means to re-conceptualize the “Black Atlantic.”