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SPEAKER BIOS:

Dr. Allie Brashears (she/her) is the Director of the CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium and LGBTQIA+ programming for the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives. She is passionate about advocating for LGBTQIA+ rights and education, as well as preserving Queens LGBTQIA+ history. As a professor of biology at LaGuardia Community College, she also works to promote accessible science education. She has a PhD in evolutionary physiology, and her research interests focus on thermal biology.

Matt Brim (he/him) is Professor of Queer Studies at the College of Staten Island and the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is Executive Director of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies. Brim’s research interests include queer literary studies, queer-class relations, and queer studies as a field formation. He is currently conducting material history interviews of queer and transgender faculty to advance the goal of redistributing resources around and beyond the queer academy. Brim is author of the award-winning Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University, James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination, and the study guide for United in Anger: A History of ACT UP. His coedited collections include Queer Sharing in the Marketized University, Queer Precarities in and out of Higher Education: Challenging Institutional Structures, and Imagining Queer Methods. Brim has published in venues including Feminist Theory, Journal of Working-Class Studies, Journal of Homosexuality, Journal of Modern Literature, Gay and Lesbian Review, and The Baffler. He is an associate editor for the open access James Baldwin Review and a reader for the open access Amerikastudien/American Studies.