Badia Ahad, PhD is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Loyola University Chicago. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University. Prof. Ahad is the author of Freud Upside Down: African American Literature and Psychoanalytic Culture (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2010) and co-editor of the volume, Difficult Subjects: Insights and Strategies for Teaching Race, Gender, and Sexuality (Stylus Press, 2018). She recently completed her second monograph on nostalgia and contemporary African American aesthetics, which is forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press in spring 2021. In addition to her faculty position, Prof. Ahad is the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs.