Keynotes

Da’Shaun L. Harrison

Da’Shaun Harrison is a trans theorist and Southern-born and bred abolitionist in Atlanta, GA. They are the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and several other media/literary honors. As an editor, movement media and narrative strategist, and storyteller, Harrison uses their extensive history as a community organizer—which began in 2014 during their first year at Morehouse College—to frame their political thought and cultural criticism. Through the lens of what Harrison calls “Black Fat Studies,” they lecture on blackness, fatness, gender, and their intersections. Harrison currently serves as Editor-at-Large at Scalawag Magazine, is a co-host of the podcast “Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back,” and ⅓ of the video podcast “In The Middle.” Between the years 2019 and 2021, Harrison served as Associate Editor—and later as Managing Editor—of Wear Your Voice Magazine.

As a speaker, Harrison has delivered keynotes and guest lectures at universities and colleges such as Harvard Law School, Yale University, Northwestern University, Spelman College, University of Cincinnati, Trinity College, and more. Their research and writing has appeared in anthologies and other texts, including Black Love Matters (2022), In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities (2022), and The Contemporary Reader of Gender and Fat Studies (2023). As a public intellectual, Harrison’s work is regularly in conversation with thinkers such as Sabrina Strings, Kiese Laymon, Joy James, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Hortense Spillers, C. Riley Snorton, Jamil al-Amin and others on the topics of (anti-)fatness, (trans)gender and sexuality, Black Feminism, Afropessimism, and Socialist thought, to name a few. 

Harrison’s writing has appeared in PhiladelphiaPrint, Scalawag Magazine, Wear Your Voice, THEM, Black Youth Project, BET, and elsewhere. They have also been featured in/interviewed by Black Power Media, The Takeaway, Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, The ACLU, The Fader, Teen Vogue, the New York Times, and a host of other podcasts and digital media platforms.

Joy James is Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities at Williams College. Her most recent book is In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities; her recent articles include "A Letter of Concern to Black Clergy Regarding "Cop City" (with Rev. Matthew V. Johnson, Jr.) in Logos, and a four-part series, Abolition Alchemy, in Inquest (with Kalonji Jama Changa). She is the author of Resisting State Violence; Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics; Transcending the Talented Tenth; and Seeking the Beloved Community: A Feminist Race Reader. Creator of the digital Harriet Tubman Literary Circle at UT Austin, James is also editor of The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings; Imprisoned Intellectuals; Warfare in the American Homeland; The Angela Y. Davis Reader; and co-editor of The Black Feminist Reader. She is a member of Penn State University's Policing, Policy, and Philosophy Initiative (3PI) and serves on the circle of advisors for Oxford Public Philosophy.

James has published numerous articles on: political theory; police, prison and slavery abolition; radicalizing feminisms; diasporic anti-black racism; and US politics. She writes on the Captive Maternal through the lens of "The Womb of Western Theory." James's forthcoming new works are New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the (After)Life of Erica Garner, and Contextualizing Angela Davis.

Joy James, PhD

Avgi Saketopoulou, PsyD

An immigrant from Cyprus and from Greece, Avgi Saketopoulou earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from Yeshiva University, having written her dissertation on the life and works of the Marquis de Sade. She trained as a psychoanalyst at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, where she is now on faculty. She teaches in various psychoanalytic institutes and is scientific advisor for Orlando, LGBT+, Greece.

Avgi’s written work has been awarded the Ralph Roughton Prize from APsaA's Committee on Gender and Sexuality, the Symonds Prize from Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and the Ruth Stein Prize while her interview on relational psychoanalysis is in the holdings of the Freud Museum, Vienna. The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association has awarded her their annual essay prize twice: in 2014 for her work with a trans girl and in 2023 for an essay on how psychoanalytic anti-racism often rests on a conceptual architecture that preserves racist ideologies. In 2021, she was co-recipient of the IPA's first Tiresias Essay Prize for a paper co-written with Dr. Ann Pellegrini. An expanded version of that paper appears in their book Gender Without Identity (2023, The Unconscious in Translation Press). Their book makes an argument for abdicating the fictional concept of “core gender identity” and works towards the flourishing of queer and trans life. In recognition of her contributions, the Scholarship and Research Award Committee of Division 39 conferred upon her the 2021 Scholarship Award. Her solo book, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia (2023, NYU Press, Sexual Cultures Series), uses psychoanalysis to take on questions of queer aesthetics, the generative potential of perversity, and the erotics of racism. Avgi's critical conversations with Dominique Scarfone were published in their volume The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (2023, The Unconscious in Translation Press).

Passionate about queer and trans life both in and outside the clinic, Avgi is intensely committed to a psychoanalytic theory and praxis that do not merely make room for queer and BIPOC subjects, but, jettisoning the low-bar of “inclusivity," work towards renewing psychoanalytic foundations. Such renewal aims at rigorous foundations that are nevertheless not conceptually polluted by the racism and homotransphobia that is pleated throughout most psychoanalytic theory.

Avgi’s love of psychoanalysis and of queers is rivaled only by her love of motorcycles.

Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation Magazine, their first sports editor in over 150 years of existence. In addition, he is a columnist for The Progressive Magazine and msnbc.com. He is the author of 11 books on the politics of sport, including most recently The Kaepernick Effect. In addition, he is the co-producer and writer of the new documentary, Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL. Named one of UTNE Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,” Zirin is a frequent guest on ESPN, MSNBC, and Democracy Now! He also hosts The Nation’s Edge of Sports podcast and Edge of Sports TV on The Real News Network.

Dave Zirin

Monique Bowen, PhD

Monique Bowen, PhD (she/her) is professor in the department of clinical psychology and core faculty in the PsyD Program at Antioch University’s School of Counseling, Psychology and Therapy. She is clinical faculty in the Couples Therapy Training and Education Program at the William Alanson White Institute. In 2019, she was named research fellow (inaugural cohort) to the College of Research Fellows of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Dr. Bowen is a 2016 graduate of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (Child and Adolescent Division) certificate program in school consultation. She serves as chair of the awards committee for the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (APA Division 39), a reviewer for the APA journal Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, and book series associate editor for the Association of Psychology-Law Society (APA Division 41).

Dr. Bowen has written book chapters on psychotherapy as well as on trauma assessment in forensic psychological settings, and she has published in the peer-reviewed journals Psychoanalytic Psychology (APA journal) and the Journal on Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy. Her scholarly interests include incorporating racial justice principles into clinical supervision; psychoanalytic and trauma-informed perspectives on the loss of “heritage language” for descendants of formerly enslaved Africans; complex trauma stemming from discrimination, prejudice, racism, and legal and extrajudicial disenfranchisement; familial/interpersonal violence; pathological bias; “ethical fandom” and the impacts of culturally-sanctioned violence in competitive sports.

Joseph S. Reynoso is psychoanalytic clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City, treating children and adults.  He is a provider for the National Basketball Players Association’s mental health and wellness program.  He previously held clinical positions at Kings County Hospital (Brooklyn, NY), Columbia University and Barnard College.  He is a board member of the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society and on the editorial board for its journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society.   Dr. Reynoso is the former Book Review Editor for the American Psychological Association’s Psychoanalytic Psychology journal.  He has presented, published and been involved in research in the areas of ADHD’s effect on children’s relationships, the psychological functions of reading and writing fiction, contemporary aspects of celebrity culture, parental discipline, the intersection of sports and oppression, and the history and treatment of narcissistic and borderline pathology.  His 2021 paper, “The Racist Within,” published in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, was a finalist for the Gradiva Award.  He has two upcoming projects on sports and psychoanalysis with his collaborator Jack Black (Sheffield Hallam University, UK).  The first, a special issue on psychoanalysis and sport, in the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society (PCS), which published his 2021article “Boston sucks! A psychoanalysis of sports.”  The second is an edited book of papers entitled, Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals About Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears (Rowman and Littlefield).  

Joseph S. Reynoso, PhD

Lara Sheehi, PsyD

Lara Sheehi, PsyD (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the George Washington University’s Professional Psychology Program where she is the founding faculty director of the Psychoanalysis and the Arab World Lab. Lara’s work takes up decolonial and anti-oppressive approaches to psychoanalysis, with a focus on liberation struggles in the Global South. She is co-author with Stephen Sheehi of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022) which won the Middle East Monitor's 2022 Palestine Book Award for Best Academic Book. Lara is the President of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (APA, Division 39), co-editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality and co-editor of Counterspace in Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. Lara is also a contributing editor to the Psychosocial Foundation’s Parapraxis Magazine and on the advisory board for the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network.