Cristina C. James earned her Bachelor's and Masters' degrees in English Literature at Columbia University and her PhD in English Literature at SUNY Albany. She also earned her Juris Doctor from Pepperdine University School of Law. After teaching, administrating, and designing English curriculum at the secondary school level for a number of years, she returned in 2019 to the undergraduate classroom, teaching for several years as a lecturer in the English department at the State University of New York at Albany. She is a trained TEDx organizer and has curated many student TEDx Talk events. Her academic interests center around the intertextual connections between canonical feminist literature, critical theory, and popular culture- especially music.