CATHY N. DAVIDSON served as Duke University’s (and the nation’s) first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies from 1998 to June 2006. In this capacity, she had administrative responsibility for over sixty research programs that operate between and among Duke’s nine academic and professional schools and played a national leadership role in creating new infrastructures in support of interdisciplinary scholarship. She is currently the Interim Director and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English at Duke. She is past President of the American Studies Association and past editor of the journal American Literature. She is also a co-founder of HASTAC (“haystack”), Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, an international consortium of leading humanities organizations and science and technology institutes. Davidson is the author or editor of eighteen books. Among the most recent is Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (a collaboration with documentary photographer Bill Bamberger), recipient of the Mayflower Cup Award for Non-Fiction. The photographs from Closing traveled to museums around the U.S. for four years, including to the Smithsonian Museum of American History where the exhibit was viewed by over three million visitors. With Ada Norris, she edited American Indian Stories, Legends and Other Writings by Zitkala-Sa, the first Penguin Classic devoted to a Native American author. In 2004, she published an Expanded Edition of Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (originally published by Oxford University Press in 1986), including a monograph-length Introduction analyzing developments in literary and cultural studies over the last two decades. She is currently working on a social history of the scientific and educational categories of “learning disabilities” and “giftedness.”

DAVID THEO GOLDBERG directs the system-wide University of California Humanities Research Institute. He is also Professor of Comparative Literature and Criminology, Law and Society, as well as a Fellow of the Critical Theory Institute, at the University of California, Irvine. He has authored several books, including The Racial State (Basil Blackwell, 2002) and Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Basil Blackwell, 1993). He has also edited or co-edited many books, including Anatomy of Racism (University of Minnesota Press 1990), Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader (Basil Blackwell 1995), Between Law and Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), Relocating Postcolonialism (Basil Blackwell, 2002), and The Companion to Gender Studies (Basil Blackwell, 2004). His current monograph, The Threat of Race, will be published by Basil Blackwell in 2007. He is a co-founder of HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, Technology Advanced Collaboratory, the international consortium for humanities and digital technologies, networking centers, institutes, and programs at more than 75 institutions of higher learning. He has been active in advancing digital technologies for pedagogy and research across the University of California, serving on various UC-wide committees overseeing the future of research information and its stewardship for the UC system.