Alice Echols is a professor of history and the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. She is the author of several books including Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, and Shortfall: Family Secrets, Financial Collapse, and a Hidden History of American Banking (The New Press). She lives in Los Angeles.