Mel Y. Chen is Associate Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Director for the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture at U.C. Berkeley. Following on from Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (Duke, 2012), they are completing a second book, Chemical Intimacies, on intoxication’s involvement in archival histories of the interanimation of time, race and disability. Besides publishing widely in journals, Chen co-edits a Duke book series entitled ‘Anima’, enjoys teaching to the odd note, and is part of a small and sustaining queer/trans of color arts collective in the SF Bay Area.