Our Academics Committee
Scot French, Ph.D.
Committee Chairman
Department of History
University of Central Florida
Orlando
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Dr. Scot French
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.
Julian C. Chambliss, Ph.D.
Michigan State University
Lansing
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Dr. Julian C. Chambliss
Dr. 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 that 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.
Michelle Cowin Gibbs, Ph.D., M.F.A.
Assistant Professor and
Head of the B.A. Program in Theatre Arts
Illinois Wesleyan University
Bloomington, IL
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Walter Greason, Ph.D.
DeWitt Wallace Professor
and Chair of the Department of History
at Macalester College
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Jason Gregory, MFA
Department of English
University of Central Florida
Orlando
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Jason Gregory
Jason D. Gregory is a graduate of UCF’s Nicholson School of Communications and Media where he received his MFA in film production. He is a three-time participant of the prestigious Hurston-Wright Writer’s Workshop, where he studied under writer, director and producer, Kevin Arkadie, (OWN’s Ambitions and Greenleaf, and FOX’s New York Undercover) and the late David Mills, (Homicide: Life on the Street, The Wire, and The Corner).
In 2019, Gregory was elected as the director of the Orlando Urban Film Festival; a festival dedicated to celebrating, elevating, and promoting content creators of color. Additionally, Gregory is a producer with 13Brains, a reality TV show, “think tank” which aired its first project Buried by the Bernards on Netflix. Finally, he is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Central Florida where he teaches intro and advanced screenwriting.
Anna Lillios, Ph.D.
Department of English
University of Central Florida
Orlando
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Dr. Anna Lillios
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.
Aman Nadhiri, Ph.D.
Department of Languages and Literature
Johnson C. Smith University
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Dr. Aman Nadhiri
Dr. Aman Nadhiri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and Literature at
Johnson C. Smith University where he teaches English literature and Arabic. He earned his doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in Medieval Literature and minored in Arabic. His book, Saracens and Franks in 12th - 15th Century European and Near Eastern Literature: Perceptions of Self and the Other, explores the ways in which individuals and societies approach difference.
Christopher Peace, Ph.D.Candidate
Associate Member
University of Kansas
Lawrence
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Christopher Peace
Christopher Peace is a 4th year rhetoric and composition PhD candidate at the University of Kansas, where he teaches composition and professional communication. Native of Clinton, Mississippi, Peace has a B.A. in Writing from Mississippi College and an M.A. in Literature from Jackson State University. His current research interests include African American spiritual rhetorics, Zora Neale Hurston, spatial rhetorics, and rhetorical ecologies. He is currently working on his dissertation that explores African American religious practices, rhizome theory, and African American Hoodoo identity. Peace is a staff member with the Project on the History of Black Writing; he also served as a graduate intern for the ZORA! Festival of the Arts and Humanities in Eatonville, Florida.
Trent Tomengo, MFA
Humanities Department
Seminole State College of Florida
Sanford
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Trent Tomengo
Trent Tomengo is a Professor of Humanities at Seminole State College of Florida in Sanford where he teaches African American Humanities, Renaissance and Baroque Humanities and Medieval Humanities. He holds a Master of Fine Art degree in painting and a graduate certificate in museum studies from the University of South Florida. Mr. Tomengo has conducted public lectures and presentations on the Harlem Renaissance, Black cultural productivity, and the spirituality of the human condition in art. In his capacity as an arts and humanities consultant, he has served on various committees in the Central Florida arts community including the Community Advisory Council for the University of Central Florida Public History Center and the Academics Committee for the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities.
website: trenttomengo.com
Clarissa West-White, Ph.D.
Reference Librarian/Instructor
Bethune-Cookman University
Daytona Beach
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Dr. Clarissa West
Dr. Clarissa West-White is a Reference Librarian/Instructor at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has degrees in Creative Writing, Curriculum & Instruction English Education and Information from Florida State University. Dr. West-White has experience as a middle and high school English teacher, program coordinator, adult literacy director, university English department chair, and assistant professor and adjunct at a number of public and private universities in the state of Florida and online. Her areas of research are as vast as her experiences, but focus primarily on the intersections of African Americans and music, education, information and technology.
Sidney Rose McCall Ph.D.Candidate
Associate Member
College of William and Mary
Willamsburg
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