Michelle Zacks

Michelle Zacks holds a B.A. in Literature from the University of North Carolina-Asheville, an M.A. in Latin American Studies (concentration in Tropical Conservation and Development) from the University of Florida, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Hawai’i-Mānoa. Raised in the New Haven area, Michelle has conducted interdisciplinary field work and historical research on coastal communities in Georgia, Florida, Haiti, and Antigua. Most recently, she worked as a folklorist and public historian on Maryland’s Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, where she focused on African American history and culture. Her research interests lie in marine environmental history and the ways in which place-based notions of belonging conflict with the racial and class hierarchies associated with nation-state definitions of citizenship.  Her book manuscript, in progress, is titled “The People’s Fish: Florida Mullet and the Marine Commonwealth.” She is also at work on a research project that examines African American labor in the antebellum oyster industry as a mechanism for constructing cultural landscapes devoted to expanded spaces of freedom.