Our Academics Committee

Scot French, Ph.D.
Committee Chairman
Department of History
University of Central Florida
Orlando

Dr. Scot French

Julian C. Chambliss, Ph.D.
Michigan State University
Lansing
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.

Jason Gregory, MFA
Department of English
University of Central Florida
Orlando
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
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
Dr. Aman Nadhiri

Christopher Peace, Ph.D.Candidate
Associate Member
University of Kansas
Lawrence

Christopher Peace

Trent Tomengo, MFA
Humanities Department
Seminole State College of Florida
Sanford
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
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.
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