Monica L. Miller is Chair and Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. A specialist in contemporary African American and Afro-diasporic literature and cultural studies, she is the author of the book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, which inspired Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the spring 2025 Costume Institute exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. A frequent commentator in the media and arts worlds, she teaches and writes about Black literature, art, and performance, fashion cultures, and contemporary Black European culture and politics. 

Richard J. Powell is the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art & Art History at Duke University. He has written on a range of topics, including such titles as Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (2008), Going There: Black Visual Satire (2020), and Black Art: A Cultural History (1997, 2002, and 2021). His forthcoming book is Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect (2026). Powell has also organized numerous art exhibitions, most notably Back to Black: Art, Cinema, and the Racial Imaginary (2005), and Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist (2014). From 2007 until 2010, Powell was Editor-in-Chief of The Art Bulletin, and in 2023 Powell was the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center Distinguished Scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.