Julia Adams, Professor of Sociology at Yale University, teaches and conducts research in the areas of state formation, gender and family, and social theory. She is currently studying contemporary forms of patriarchal politics and the historical sociology of principal-agent relations. She is the author of The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Cornell University Press, 2005) and the co-editor (with Elisabeth S. Clemens and Ann Shola Orloff) of Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology (Duke University Press, 2005).

Teri L. Caraway is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her research focuses on gender and comparative politics, and the comparative political economy of labor. Her research has appeared in Comparative Politics and Studies in Comparative International Development, and she has recently completed a book manuscript about the feminization of manufacturing work in developing countries.

Sujatha Fernandes is a Wilson-Cotsen Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She has published articles on Cuban rap music and is currently completing a book manuscript entitled, The Arts of Politics: Culture, Public Spheres, and State Power in Contemporary Cuba.

Ronald Inglehart is a Professor of Political Science and Program Director at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. He helped to found the Euro-Barometer surveys and directs the World Values Surveys. His research deals with changing belief systems and their impact on social and political change. His most recent books are Rising Tide: Gender Equality in Global Perspective (with Pippa Norris; Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Sacred and Secular: The Secularization Thesis Revisited (with Pippa Norris; Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (with Christian Welzel; Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Amy G. Mazur is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Washington State University. Her books include: Comparative State Feminism (co-editor, with Dorothy McBride Stetson; Sage, 1995); Gender Bias and the State: Symbolic Reform at Work in Fifth Republic France (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995); State Feminism, Women's Movement, and Job Training: Making Democracies Work in the Global Economy (editor; Routledge, 2001); and Theorizing Feminist Policy (Oxford University Press, 2002). Her most recent articles have appeared in Review of Policy Research, Travail Genre et Société, and Espace-Temps. She is co-convener (with Dorothy E. McBride) of the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State (RGNS).

Dorothy E. McBride (formerly Stetson) retired in June 2005 as Professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University where she was a founder of the Women's Studies Program. She is co-convener (with Amy G. Mazur) of the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State (RNGS), an international group of scholars engaged in the study of state feminism in postindustrial democracies. She is author of Women's Rights in the U.S.A.: Policy Conflict and Gender Roles, 3^rd ed. (Garland/Routledge, 2004), and editor and contributing author of Abortion Politics, Women's Movements and the Democratic State: A Comparative Study of State Feminism (Routledge, 2001).

Pippa Norris is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Her research compares elections and public opinion, political communications, and gender politics. She has published almost three-dozen books, including most recently for Cambridge University Press, Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Culture Change around the World (2003); Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (2004), both with Ron Inglehart; and Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Regulated Market (2005); and for Oxford University Press, Britain Votes 2005 (with Chris Wlezien; 2005).

Ann Shola Orloff is Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Northwestern University. Her areas of interest include political sociology, historical and comparative sociology, sociology of gender, and social (including feminist) theory. She is the author of States, Markets, Families (with Julia O'Connor and Sheila Shaver; Cambridge, 1999); co-editor of Remaking Modernity: Politics, History and Sociology (with Julia Adams and Elisabeth Clemens; Duke, 2004); and founder and editor of Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society.

Marion Smiley is the J.P. Morgan Chase Professor of Ethics at Brandeis University, where she is a member of the faculty of the Department of Philosophy as well as a faculty associate of the Politics Department. She is the author of Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community (University of Chicago Press, 1992), as well as numerous articles on the nature of democracy, international justice, women's and human rights, and collective responsibility. Her book Falling Through Trap Doors: The Philosophy and Politics of Group Identification is forthcoming from Cornell University Press.

Nicholas J. G. Winter is Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University. His research focuses on public opinion and political behavior, and on the links between gender, race, and public opinion. He is author of “Beyond Welfare: Framing and the Racialization of White Opinion on Social Security,” which is forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, and is co-author, with Donald Kinder, of “Exploring the Racial Divide: Blacks, Whites, and Opinion on National Policy,” which appeared in the American Journal of Political Science in 2001.

Laura R. Woliver is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Associate Director of the Women's Studies Program at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. She is the author of The Political Geographies of Pregnancy (University of Illinois Press, 2002) and From Outrage to Action: The Politics of Grass-Roots Dissent (University of Illinois Press, 1993). In addition, she has published many articles on women and politics, social movements, grass roots politics, and feminist theory. She received her PhD in political science in 1986 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Iris Marion Young is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and an affiliate of the Center for Gender Studies. Her books include Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy and Policy (Princeton University Press, 1997) and On Female Body Experience: ‘Throwing Like a Girl’ and Other Essays (Oxford University Press, 2005). Polity Press will issue a collection of her essays next year under the title, Global Quandaries: On War, Self-Determination and Global Justice.

Karen Zivi (PhD, Rutgers University) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern California, where she teaches political theory and feminist theory. Her research focuses on the theory and practice of rights in contemporary identity-based political movements. Her work on identity, rights, and politics has appeared in Polity and Law and Society Review, and is forthcoming in Feminist Studies and the American Journal of Political Science. She is currently working on a book entitled Rethinking the Politics of Rights.