The Department of History is very happy to announce that Dr. Michael Vinson Williams will join the UTC community in August 2024 as a Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies. Dr. Williams will be joining us from the University of Texas at El Paso, where he is the Director of the African American Studies Program and Professor of History. Dr. Williams is an accomplished scholar and award-winning educator whose research and teaching focus on social and political resistance movements, grassroots activism, Black radical intellectuals, and Civil Rights activism. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Mississippi. He has published several scholarly articles and chapters in edited collections, as well as a book titled Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr, published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2011.
Dr. Williams is a member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and the National Council for Black Studies. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors and has served on many committees and boards, including the Medgar Wiley Evers 60th Commemoration Events Planning Committee, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Scholars Program Selection Committee, and Write Across Borders. He has also been featured as an expert in his field in interviews, on television and radio, and in documentary films and print media.
The search committee for the position included faculty from the History Department as well as faculty and staff from other departments who serve on the Africana Studies Advisory Committee. Dr. Williams impressed the committee, the History Department, and everyone who met him during the interview process with his enthusiasm for program building and his passion for student success and community engagement. We are very excited about the work Dr. Williams will do here at UTC for the History Department and the Africana Studies Program, and across the university and greater Chattanooga community.
We are grateful for the work of everyone who contributed to the effort to develop this position and secure the best person to fill it, especially the members of the Search Committee (Prof. Will Kuby, Prof. Susan Eckelmann, Prof. DeAnna Beasley, and Mr. Christopher Stokes), the other members of the Africana Studies Advisory Committee (Prof. Tiffany Mitchell, Dr. Chandra Ward, and Vice Provost Shewanee Howard-Baptiste), former History Department Head Prof. Mike Thompson, current History Department Head Prof. Kira Robison, College of Arts and Sciences Dean Pamela Riggs-Gelasco, and Vice Chancellor Stacy Lightfoot. Thanks to all the faculty, staff, students, and community members who were part of this process and who will continue to support Dr. Williams in his new role.
Dr. Williams will be visiting campus in April and giving a public talk. Please join us in welcoming him to Chattanooga! Follow along with us on Instagram @utc_africanastudies and @utchistory and stay tuned for more news about Dr. Williams’s talk in April, other events, and more.