SUBSTANCE OF FIRE: GENDER AND RACE IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM brings readers inside the four-year college experience, unfolding multiple perspectives and voices. This multi-genre book, written by college professor Claire Millikin, explores how race and gender function within the privilege of the four-year college classroom. Additional contributions are from recent graduates and current faculty, who interrogate the forces of sexism and racism from the various perspectives of gay, straight, biracial, white, African American, and Latino writers and artists. How does being a female professor differ from being a male professor? How does being a lesbian student make a difference in terms of accessing a professor's time, attention, and respect? How does having dark skin or a non-Anglo last name impact a student's freedom to pursue different majors? These and more questions are examined in THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE. As the title suggests, race and gender are not topics "under control" in higher education but instead they are flash points, tinder, waiting just under the surface of our culture that still makes the claim of equal access to higher education even as so many lives testify to the incompleteness of this so-called equality. Gender and race can ignite, causing pain in the college setting. This book goes to the place of that fire.

CLAIRE MILLIKIN RAYMOND is a poet and scholar, who has taught at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville since 2007. Her scholarly works include WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS AND FEMINIST AESTHETICS (2017) FRANCESCA WOODMAN'S DARK GAZE (2016), and WITNESSING SADISM IN TEXTS OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH (2014). She has also published several volumes of poetry. www.claireraymond.org.
Riley Blanks is an Austin-based photographer, storyteller and model.
ROX TRUJILLO is a 2014 graduate of the University of Virginia. With family roots in South America and in Europe, Rox currently lives and works in the D.C. Metropolitan area while developing an expertise in martial arts.
BLAKELEY CALHOUN earned a BA of Arts at University of Virginia and received an MA in Sociology at Michigan State University. A member of the University of Virginia's Serpentine Society, Calhoun serves as an Assistant Community Director.