Foy Scalf is Research Associate; Head of Research Archives; and Head of the the Integrated Database Project at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He also acts as Principal Investigator for a corpus-based digital project known as OIDOO, the Oriental Institute Demotic Ostraca Online. He received his PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago in 2014 with a dissertation examining funerary literature from Roman Egypt and identifying its origins in the oral traditions attested in graffiti from preceding centuries. He is currently curating a special exhibit for the Oriental Institute Museum called Book of the Dead: Becoming God in Ancient Egypt and he assembled a group of internationally-acclaimed scholars as editor of the accompanying catalog. In 2016, he was awarded...
Michelle D. Commander is an associate professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee. She earned a PhD in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California. Commander spent the 2012-2013 school year in Accra, Ghana, as a Fulbright Lecturer/Researcher, where she taught at the University of Ghana-Legon and completed follow-up research for Afro-Atlantic Flight. She is currently working on three projects: a book manuscript on the function of speculative ideologies and science in contemporary African American cultural production; a book-length project on Black counter-narratives of the U.S. South; and a creative nonfiction volume on African American mobility. Commander has also engaged in essay writing for public audiences, which has been cathartic and challenging. You can find her...