M. Jacqui Alexander

M. Jacqui Alexander is a writer, teacher, and activist. She is both a Professor Emeritus at the Women and Gender Studies Department of the University of Toronto as well as the creator and director of the Tobago Centre "for the study and practice of indigenous spirituality". Jacqui Alexander is an enthusiast of "the ancient African (diasporic) spiritual systems of Orisa/Ifá, and a student of yoga and Vipassana meditation". She has received teachings on this meditative practice in Nigeria, the Kôngo, India, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, and New York. The themes of her work have captured a range of social justice subjects from the effects of imperialism, colonialism, and enslavement with special attention paid to the "pathologizing narratives" around homosexuality, gender, nationalism. Alexander's academic areas of interest specifically include: African Diasporic Cosmologies, African Diasporic Spiritual Practices, Caribbean studies, Gender and the Sacred, Heterosexualization and State Formation, Transnational feminism.

Driven by anti-colonial, feminist, women of color and queer movements globally, Alexander’s works have addressed the fundamentality of (hetero)sexuality to the "project of nation building; the pedagogical importance of teaching for justice; the need for a critical interdisciplinarity; and the sacred dimensions of women’s experience." Provided by Wikipedia