CONVERGENCE:

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 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. He is producer and host of Reframing History, a podcast exploring humanities theory and practice in the United States.

Keynote Address: The Black Imaginary and the Search for a Sustainable Community​

Whether expressed in fictive narratives or pursued through community-building activities, an African American vision for a sustainable community cannot be divorced from questions of liberation. A legacy of black speculative practice that embraced equity in form black towns and championed a vision of sustainability linked to black autonomy remains a legacy worthy of consideration. What can this legacy of sustainability teach us about nurturing new community development practice?

Julian’s Work