Terrion L. Williamson is an associate professor of Black Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she is also the director of the Black Midwest Initiative. She is the author of Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life (Fordham University Press, 2017) and the editor of Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest (Belt Publishing, 2020). Her research and teaching specializations include Black feminist thought, Black women’s literature, Black cultural studies, midwestern studies, and racialized gender violence, and her work has been featured in a variety of public and academic outlets. Born and raised in Peoria, Illinois, she is currently working on a book titled We Cannot Live Without Our Lives that centers the case of nine black women who were killed in her hometown between 2003 and 2004.