Francesca T. Royster is a Professor of English
at DePaul University, where she teaches courses in Shakespeare Studies,
Performance Studies, Critical Race theory, Gender and Queer Theory and African
American Literature. She received her PhD in English from University of
California, Berkeley in 1995. She is the author of Becoming Cleopatra: The
Shifting Image of an Icon (Palgrave/MacMillan in 2003) and Sounding Like a
No-No: Queer Sounds and Outrageous Acts in the Post-Soul Era (University of
Michigan, 2013), which won Honorable Mention in the Modern Language
Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize for an Outstanding Scholarly
Study of African American Literature or Culture. She has also published
numerous book chapters and scholarly essays in Biography, Journal of Popular
Music Studies, Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Studies, Text and Performance
Studies, Performance Research International and Women in Performance, among
others. She is at work on a new book project that looks at Blackness in Country
Music.
She has trained and volunteered as a counselor
for the Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline and has served on non-profit boards such as
Women and Girls CAN and Beyondmedia Education, a past organization focusing on
grassroots media activism for women and youth. Her other interests include
activism through performance and other forms of art, and learning to play jazz
on the upright bass.