Katharina Weygold (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of American Studies at Brown University. In her dissertation, Katharina studies African American women’s ideas about Haiti and their activism, writing, performances, artwork, and interactions and collaborations with Haitians in the context of U.S. imperialism in Haiti from the U.S. occupation (1915 – 1934) to the Duvalier regime (1957 – 1986). Drawing on archival sources and oral histories, the project explores how focusing on women changes our understanding of the meaning of Haiti and U.S. imperialism for African Americans. Katharina holds an M.A. in Public Humanities from Brown University and an M.A. in American Studies from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

Since coming to Toronto Metropolitan University in 2005, Dr. Irene Gammel has held positions as professor of English, Canada Research Chair in Modern Literature and Culture (2005; renewed 2011), and director of the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre. She is the author and editor of fourteen books, including the internationally acclaimed Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity (MIT Press) and Looking for Anne of Green Gables (St. Martin’s Press), as well as over 50 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. Irene Gammel is well- known for her scholarship on gender and modernism. Her research has helped uncover the earliest roots of modern and feminist performance art, contributed to the consolidation of L.M. Montgomery Studies as an academic field, and claimed women‘s confessional discourses as a sub- discipline of autobiographical studies. As the Director of the Modern Literature and Culture (MLC) Research Centre, she has hosted and curated numerous exhibitions, symposia, and workshops; her passion is training students at all levels through experiential methods.