Outside elite institutions, queer studies has the potential to go hand in hand with broader struggles of racial and economic justice.

Velina Manolova
Velina Manolova is a scholar, writer, poet, teacher, painter, and amateur photographer based in New York City. She teaches humanities, critical theory, and writing at Pratt Institute and New York University. Her book project “Love and Revolution: Queer Freedom, Tragedy, Belonging, and Decolonization, 1944–1970” explores the relationship between intersectionality and intersubjectivity in works by James Baldwin, Carson McCullers, Lorraine Hansberry, and Lillian Smith. Her essay “The Tragic ‘Complexity of Manhood’: Masculinity Formations and Performances in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room” appears in Contemporary Masculinities in the UK and US: Between Bodies and Systems (Palgrave, 2017). Manolova received her PhD in English from the Graduate Center, CUNY, in 2019.