Women and Migration(s) II

Ellyn Toscano is Executive Director of New York University Florence. She directs NYU’s Villa La Pietra, a fifteenth-century villa and collection of six thousand objects dating from the Etruscans to the twentieth century. She founded and directs La Pietra Dialogues, a year-long series of conferences and talks, and founded and produces The Season, a summer cultural festival in the Villa’s expansive gardens. Before arriving at NYU Florence, Toscano served as Chief of Staff and Counsel to Congressman Jose Serrano of New York, was his chief policy advisor and directed his work on the Appropriations Committee. Toscano also served as counsel to the New York State Assembly Committee on Education for nine years. She has served on the boards of several prominent arts and cultural institutions including the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (as the representative of the Brooklyn Borough President). In Italy, she serves on the board of the Museo Marino Marini in Florence, and the Italian Advisory Council of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. A lawyer by training, Toscano earned an LLM in International Law from New York University School of Law.

Deborah Willis, PhD, is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has an affiliated appointment with the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis, Africana Studies, where she teaches courses on photography and imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. Her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, the photographic history of Slavery and Emancipation, contemporary women photographers and beauty. She received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and was a Richard D. Cohen Fellow in African and African American Art, Hutchins Center, Harvard University and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. Professor Willis received the NAACP Image Award in 2014 for her co-authored book Envisioning Emancipation. Other notable projects include Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers – 1840 to the Present, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs, an NAACP Image Award Literature Winner.