August 13th: Black Feminist Sociology as a Balm

Zakiya Luna, MSW, PhD  is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar at Washington University in Saint Louis. Her research, teaching and community work focus on social movements, reproduction, human rights and intersectionality. Her research on the reproductive justice movement includes the book Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice (NYU Press), which was included on the Oprah Daily list “The 12 Books You Need to Read Post the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade Smackdown.” In 2023, she was named the Distinguished Feminist Lecturer by Sociologists for Women in Society. In 2023, she was also the inaugural recipient of the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Early Career Award for Contribution to Social Movements Scholarship. Her book, Roe Was Never Enough, is forthcoming with The New Press. 

Whitney Pirtle, PhD. is an Associate Professor of in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Fielding School of Public Health, and affiliated in Sociology, at UCLA. Dr. Pirtle is trained as a critical race sociologist with interdisciplinary subject area expertise in race, racism, and anti-Blackness; health disparities and health equity; Black feminist sociology and praxis; and mixed methodologies. Dr. Pirtle is directing a center on racism and health at UCLA, where she continues to lead the Sociology of Health and Equity (SHE) Lab she founded in her former position at the University of California, Merced (UCM). At UCM, she held the MacArthur Foundation Chair in International Justice and Human Rights. Dr. Pirtle is co-editor, with Dr. Zakiya Luna, of the field defining volume, Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis (2021) with a second edition slated for release in 2026. She is working on a forthcoming book on race in contemporary South Africa, Coloured-Blind: Racial Limbo in the Rainbow Nation.