John Oxendine
Mr. Oxendine has been an investor, operator and lender in the broadcasting industry for over 25 years, with a primary focus upon investment in minority owned or controlled companies. In 1987 Mr. Oxendine formed Blackstar Communications, Inc. (“BCI”), and served as its Chairman, President and CEO. BCI acquired and operated commercial television stations WBSF, Melbourne, FL, KBSP, Salem, OR and WBSX, Ann Arbor, MI. The stations were originally affiliates of the Home Shopping Network, Inc. (“HSN”) and were subsequently converted to affiliates of USA Networks. In June 1995, Mr. Oxendine secured an equity investment by Fox Televisions Stations, Inc. (“Fox”) and formed Blackstar L.L.C. (“Blackstar”) with the support of Fox and HSN as a new holding company for BCI. In February 1996 Blackstar acquired KEVN-TV, Rapid City, SD, and KIVV-TV, Ch. 5, Lead-Deadwood, SD, which were then converted to Fox affiliates.
Dr. Carole Boyce Davies
Carole Boyce Davies is professor of English and Africana Studies at Cornell University. She has held distinguished professorships at a number of institutions, including the Herskovits Professor of African Studies and Professor of Comparative Literary Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (Routledge, 1994) and Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (Duke University Press, 2008). In addition to numerous scholarly articles, Boyce-Davies has also published the following critical anthologies:Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature (Africa World Press, 1986); Out of the Kumbla. Caribbean Women and Literature (Africa World Press, 1990); and a two-volume collection of critical and creative writing entitled Moving Beyond Boundaries (New York University Press, 1995): International Dimensions of Black Women’s Writing (volume 1), and Black Women’s Diasporas (volume 2). She is co-editor with Ali Mazrui and Isidore Okpewho of The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (Indiana University Press, 1999) and Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies (Africa World Press, 2003). She is general editor of a three-volume, The Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2008), and of Claudia Jones. Beyond Containment: Autobiography, Essays, Poetry (Banbury: Ayebia, 2011).
Dr. Laurie Shrage Director
Women’s Studies Program. Florida International University
Laurie Shrage received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego (1983). She is Director of Women’s Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Florida International University. Her books include Abortion and Social Responsibility: Depolarizing the Debate (Oxford, 2003), Moral Dilemmas of Feminism (Routledge, 1994), and the edited collection “You’ve Changed”: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity (Oxford, 2009). She served as co-editor of the journal Hypatia, with Nancy Tuana, from 1998-2003. She contributed “Feminist Perspectives on Sex Markets” to the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Her current projects include “Does the Government Need to Know Your Sex?” and “’Anatomy is Not Destiny’: Sex, Gender, and Sexual Orientation Meet Transgender Studies.”
