Public Scholar, Writer, Performer, Dj & Spatial Activist

Michelle S. Johnson, serves as a public scholar in the fields of Black history, literature and cultural production and applies her background in cultural studies programs and classroom environments to community and the physical environment through transformative application of the humanities. 

Johnson has executed extensive work on securing and promoting spaces where socially marginalized people can express their autonomous and authentic selves.

As co-founder and former executive director of Fire Historical and Cultural Arts Collaborative, a cultural non-profit in Kalamazoo and founder of Playgrown, Johnson has facilitated and participated in interdisciplinary culture centered development and experiences.

Cofounder of The Institute of Public Scholarship, Johnson engages Space, Place, and Insistence on the ground in the fields of Black History, Environmental Culture, Oral Testimony, Literature, and Cultural Production. 

Johnson’s formal education includes a BA in Humanities from Michigan State University in English, Philosophy, Psychology and Women’s Studies and a PhD in American Culture in African American Literature, 19th Century American Literature and Environmental History. Centering the power of telling story, Johnson consults on Black and Queer history projects that document the people, narratives and places of Black autonomy and Queer autonomies, and researches, writes, curates, develops exhibits, performs, and lectures for academic and public settings.  

Johnson’s publications include “Tell ‘Em What We Did!’: Choosing and Building Black Space in the Midwest, in Black in the Middle , Rooster, a short story in Midnight and Indigo, Black Shapings of Freedom and Emancipation Celebrations in Saginaw, Michigan, 1839–1915, The Middle West Review and Greens, Once Removed, in Gravy Quarterly. Co-founder of the Institute of Public Scholarship in the Arts, Sciences and Humanities, Johnson was named a 2021 Rubinger Fellow to establish The Cultural Land Stewardship.