Plumes of Progress

Christiana Abraham is Senior Lecturer in Black Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montréal. She earned a Ph.D in Communication Studies from McGill University. Her teaching and research specialities are in Black studies, critical race studies, media, visual representations and culture; de/post-coloniality and gender; race, ethnicity and media; and transnational and global-South media practices. A scholar, media practitioner, and independent curator, her scholarship is interested in the destabilization and re-visualization of visualities in anti-racist and de-colonial pedagogies. Her writings have been featured in the Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, Atlantis, Journal of Curatorial Studies and TOPIA. She is the curator of Protests and Pedagogy: Representations, Memories, and Meanings, an archival exhibition that commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Sir George Williams Student protest.

Rohini Bannerjee (she.her.elle), daughter of immigrant Settlers from Himachal Pradesh, India, was born and raised on unceded Mi’kmaki territory, on the Dartmouth side of the great harbour of Kjipuktuk. Chevalière de l’Ordre de la Pléiade, Rohini earned her PhD in French Studies at Western University in 2006 and is a Full Professor of French in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. A scholar, translator, and creative writer, Rohini’s primary research focuses on the literatures and cultures of the Francophone Indian Ocean. Papers on Mauritian literature have appeared in Nouvelles Etudes Francophones, Indialogs, and portAcadie. In 2021, she co-edited From Band-Aids to Scalpels: Motherhood Experiences in/of Medicine with Demeter Press and, in 2024, Premières Vagues: Poèmes covidiens des espaces minoritaires et diasporiques de la francophonie with L’Harmattan, Paris. During her tenure in senior academic administration, Rohini co-led the signing of the Scarborough Charter. Her short stories and poetry exploring themes on belonging, identity, and body image, written in both French and in English, have appeared in Canada, Spain, France and India.