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Michelle Grant-Murray is an independent choreographer, performer and Artistic Director of Olujimi Dance Theatre. Her work has been performed and published in Europe, Asia, South America, the United States and the Caribbean. She is currently on her 2nd term as an Artist in Resident for historic Deering Estate. Additionally, she has also recipient of the Live Arts Miami LaLa Residency. Michelle is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Dance at Miami Dade College Kendall Campus where and serves as the Artistic Director of Miami Dade College’s Jubilation Dance Ensemble. She is Co-founder of the Florida Black Dance Artists Organization.

Michelle is the host and brains behind The Black Artist Talk, a conversation that dialogs the process, politics, and preservation of Black Artist in South Florida. Michelle is the Executive Director of the annual Artistry In Rhythm (A.I.R.) Dance Conference presented and sponsored by Miami Dade College. Michelle, author of Beyond the Surface: An Inclusive American Dance History, is a writer, scholar, performer, choreographer, educator and mentor. She has developed and implemented Olujimi Dance Technique and a unique choreographic process, Ancestral Dance Movement Memory (ADMM). Michelle is committed to the upliftment of Black Women, earth ethics, ecology and sustainability. She serves on the Miami Dade College Earth Ethics Institute and is actively engaged in National Water Dance.

About the Speaker

Carole Boyce-Davies is the H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters and Professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University. She is the author of the prize-wining Left of Karl Marx. The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (2008); the classic Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (1994); Caribbean Spaces. Escape Routes from Twilight Zones (2013) and a bi-lingual children’s story Walking/An Avan (2016/2017) in Haitian Kreyol and English. In addition to over a hundred essays, articles and book chapters, Dr. Boyce-Davies has also published thirteen critical editions on African, African Diaspora and Caribbean literature and culture such as the two-volume collection of critical and creative writing Moving Beyond Boundaries (1995): International Dimensions of Black Women’s Writing (volume1), Black Women’s Diasporas (volume 2); the 3-volume Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2008) and Claudia Jones Beyond Containment: Autobiographical Reflections, Poetry, Essays (2011) A member of the scientific committee for UNESCO’s updated General History of Africa, she edited the epistemological forum on “Global Blackness” for the African Diaspora volume. Her forthcoming contracted monograph is titled Alternative Presidents. Black Women’s Right to Political Leadership (2021). Her popular essays and reviews have been published in media including The Washington Post, The Crisis, Ms Magazine, Ithaca Journal, The Black Scholar, Miami Herald.