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Michelle D. Commander

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Michelle D. Commander
EducationPhD, University of Southern California
Occupation(s)Author and Historian
AwardsFulbright scholar
Websitehttps://www.michelle-commander.com/

Michelle D. Commander is a historian and author, and serves as Deputy Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.[1][2]

Education

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Commander received her BA in English from Charleston Southern University and completed a M.S. in Curriculum and Instruction at Florida State University before completing a MA and PhD in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.[3]

Career

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Before joining the Lapidus Center, Commander worked as associate professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee.[4] She serves as faculty for Rare Book School,[5] and is an author at Ms. Magazine.[2]

Commander served as consulting curator and literary scholar for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Afrofuturism period room, Before Yesterday We Could Fly, which opened in November 2021.[6][7][8]

Scholarship

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Commander's work focuses on slavery and memory, diaspora studies, literary studies, Afrofuturism, and Black social movements.[3] Her publications include Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic (Duke University Press 2017), and Avidly Reads Passages (NYU Press 2021). She is editor of Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition, an anthology of Black history spanning transatlantic slavery to Reconstruction.[9] Her focus on Black mobility, slavery, diasporic longing and speculative futures is evident in her influence on Before Yesterday We Could Fly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[10][11]

Awards

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Commander is a Ford Foundation scholar and is the recipient of a Fulbright grant which funded teaching and research in Ghana in 2012-2013.[4][12]

References

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  1. ^ "Contact Information for Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture". The New York Public Library. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  2. ^ a b "Michelle D. Commander, Author at Ms. Magazine". msmagazine.com. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  3. ^ a b "ASE Graduate Student Profile > Department of American Studies and Ethnicity > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences". dornsife.usc.edu. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  4. ^ a b "New Associate Director and Curator of the Lapidus Center – Lapidus Center". www.lapiduscenter.org. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  5. ^ "Michelle Commander". Rare Book School. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  6. ^ Tillet, Salamishah (2021-11-17). "Afrofuturist Room at the Met Redresses a Racial Trauma". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  7. ^ "Exhibition: Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room". Met Museum. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  8. ^ "5 Powerful Reasons to Visit the Met's New Afrofuturist Period Room". Architectural Digest. 2021-11-02. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  9. ^ "Schomburg Curator Releases Two Books in One Month". The New York Public Library. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  10. ^ Keller, Hadley (2021-11-03). "A New Met Museum Exhibit Reimagines the Town That Was Destroyed to Make Way for Central Park". House Beautiful. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  11. ^ Migan, Darla (2021-11-15). "Period Rooms Usually Glorify the Aristocracy. With Its New Afrofuturist Room, the Met's Approach Is Different". Artnet News. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  12. ^ "Four Professors Named Fulbright Scholars". News. 2012-10-09. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
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