Dr. Scot French is an Associate Professor of History, Associate Director of the Center for Humanities and Digital Research, and Director of Public History at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory(Houghton Mifflin, 2004) and has published extensively on African American history and sites of memory. A film based on his research, “That World is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town,” won Audience Favorite, Best Short Documentary, at the 2010 Virginia Film Festival. Since 2018 he has curated three exhibits on Zora Neale Hurston’s ties to Central Florida and published a peer-reviewed article, “Social Preservation and Moral Capitalism in the Historic Black Township of Eatonville, Florida,” in Change Over Time. He is a member and chair of the ZORA! Festival’s Academics Committee, and local organizer for its 2021 Afrofuturism conference at UCF’s downtown campus.

Dr. Scot French is an Associate Professor of History, Associate Director of the Center for Humanities and Digital Research, and Director of Public History at the University of Central Florida. He is author of The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory(Houghton Mifflin, 2004) and has published extensively on African American history and sites of memory. A film based on his research, “That World is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town,” won Audience Favorite, Best Short Documentary, at the 2010 Virginia Film Festival. Since 2018 he has curated three exhibits on Zora Neale Hurston’s ties to Central Florida and published a peer-reviewed article, “Social Preservation and Moral Capitalism in the Historic Black Township of Eatonville, Florida,” in Change Over Time. He is a member and chair of the ZORA! Festival’s Academics Committee, and local organizer for its 2021 Afrofuturism conference at UCF’s downtown campus.

Julian Chambliss, Professor, College of Arts and Letters, Department of English

Julian C. Chambliss is Professor of English with an appointment in History and the Val Berryman Curator of History at the MSU Museum at Michigan State University. In addition, he is a core participant in the MSU College of Arts & Letters’ Consortium for Critical Diversity in a Digital Age Research (CEDAR). His research interests focus on race, culture, and power in real and imagined urban spaces. His recent writing has appeared in American Historical Review, Phylon, Frieze Magazine, Rhetoric Review, and Boston Review. An interdisciplinary scholar he has designed museum exhibitions, curated art shows, and created public history projects that trace community, ideology, and power in the United States.

He is co-editor and contributor for Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men: Superheroes and the American Experience, a book examining the relationship between superheroes and the American Experience (2013). His recent book projects include Assembling the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Essays on the Social, Cultural and Geopolitical Domain (2018) and Cities Imagined: The African Diaspora in Media and History (2018). Chambliss is co-producer and host of Every Tongue Got to Confess, a podcast examining communities of color. Every Tongue is the winner of the 2019 Hampton Dunn New Media Award from the Florida Historical Society Florida. In addition, he co-produced and co-hosted with Dr. Robert Cassanello from University of Central Florida of the Florida Constitution Podcast, a limited series podcast the won the 2019 Hampton Dunn Internet Award from Florida Historical Society. He is producer and host of Reframing History, a podcast exploring history theory and practice in the United States.

Dr. Anna Lillios is a Professor of English at the University of Central Florida. Her research interests center on literature of place, particularly Mediterranean studies (focusing on the work of Lawrence Durrell) and Florida studies (focusing on the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Ernest Hemingway). She is the author most recently of Crossing the Creek: The Literary Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, which received a Florida Book Award for non-fiction. Lawrence Durrell and the Greek World, her edited volume of essays, is the first study of Durrell’s imaginative connection to Hellenic culture. She directs the Zora Neale Hurston Electronic Archive and is the editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal and The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature. Her current projects include (1) introducing the works of Hurston to a Russian audience (she was a Fulbright scholar to Russia in 2018 and has published articles on Hurston in Russian academic journals beginning in 2013) and (2) writing a book on Zora Neale Hurston and the Harlem Renaissance.

Dr. Anna Lillios is a Professor of English at the University of Central Florida. Her research interests center on literature of place, particularly Mediterranean studies (focusing on the work of Lawrence Durrell) and Florida studies (focusing on the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Ernest Hemingway). She is the author most recently of Crossing the Creek: The Literary Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, which received a Florida Book Award for non-fiction. Lawrence Durrell and the Greek World, her edited volume of essays, is the first study of Durrell’s imaginative connection to Hellenic culture. She directs the Zora Neale Hurston Electronic Archive and is the editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal and The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature. Her current projects include (1) introducing the works of Hurston to a Russian audience (she was a Fulbright scholar to Russia in 2018 and has published articles on Hurston in Russian academic journals beginning in 2013) and (2) writing a book on Zora Neale Hurston and the Harlem Renaissance.