Visiting scholar Julian C. Chambliss (Michigan State University) will give a public talk titled "Afrofuturism and Digital Humanities: Some Considerations on Digital Public Record and the Black Experience" on September 25 as part of the UT Humanities Center’s “Dialogues” digital humanities mini-series within its 2023-2024 Distinguished Lecture Series.  

The case for Black Digital Humanities advocates for the transformative potential offered by the intersections of black studies and digital humanities. In this talk, I will discuss the implication of Afrofuturism 2.0 ideology offered by Afrofuturist thinkers such as Drs. Lonny Brooks and Reynaldo Anderson and how we might use their Afrofuturist framing to create digital humanities methodologies that address post-Reconstruction activism by African Americans. 

The lecture is free and open to the public and is held in Hodges Library’s auditorium on the UT Knoxville campus. Public parking is available in the Volunteer Hall parking garage for our off-campus visitors. Everyone is welcome! 

About the Speaker: 

Julian C. Chambliss is a professor of English and the Val Berryman Curator of History at the MSU Museum at Michigan State University. In addition, he is the faculty lead for the Department of English Graphic Possibilities Research Workshop and a core participant in the MSU College of Arts & Letters’ Consortium for Critical Diversity in a Digital Age Research (CEDAR). His research focuses on race, culture, and power in real and imagined spaces. His recent writing has appeared in Scholarly Editing, Genealogy, KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies, and The Conversation US.  

About the Series: 

The UT Humanities Center's Distinguished Lecture Series bring acclaimed humanities scholars and renowned artists to the Knoxville campus for research-based conversations with UT faculty and graduate students and to give a public talk on a topic of the speaker's choosing. Speakers are nominated and hosted by faculty from our nine affiliated arts and humanities departments. Because only speakers with exceptional records of publication and research activity are eligible to receive a nomination as a visiting scholar, the program brings to campus some of the most cutting-edge and prolific intellectuals in the humanities today. Details on this season’s program are available at humanitiescenter.utk.edu/public/visiting. If you enjoy this series and would like to support future UT Humanities Center programming, please visit humanitiescenter.utk.edu/giving to learn about giving opportunities.