Department of English

College of Humanities and Sciences

Current StudentsGive

Michael Ra-shon Hall

Michael Ra-shon Hall, PhD

Pronouns: he/his

Associate Professor

Hibbs Hall, 900 Park Ave., room 432

20th/21st Century

Literatures of Diversity

Education

  • PhD, Emory University
  • MPS, Cornell University
  • BA, Southeastern Louisiana University

Research Interests

  • 20th Century and Contemporary African American literature
  • Travel and imagination
  • Cultural histories of travel and leisure
  • Race and Recreation
  • Speculative fiction
  • Narrative and visual culture

Select Publications

  • “Fact or Fiction?: (Re)Defining the Study of (African American and Black Atlantic) Travel Writing.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to Multiethnic US Travel Writing. Ed. Gary Totten. London: Bloomsbury Forthcoming [Invited]
  • Rev. of James B. Haile, III’s The Dark Delight of Being Strange: Black Stories of Freedom (New York: Columbia University Press, 2024), American Literary History, Volume 38, Issue 3, July 2026, 1-3. [Invited]
  • “How did I (We) Get Here?: Speculative Time Travel and the Contested Place of Technology in Afrofuturistic Fictions.” Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mix Tape in Black Literature & Arts. Ed. DuEwa Frazier. New York: Routledge 2024. [Invited]
  • Freedom Beyond Confinement: Travel and Imagination In African American Cultural History and Letters (Clemson University Press, 2022)

Affiliations

  • Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association
  • Modern Language Association

Courses

  • ENGL 215: Reading Literature
  • ENGL 301: Introduction to the English Major
  • ENGL 382: African American Literature from Realism to the Present
  • ENGL 383: Short Fiction
  • ENGL 417: Themes in African American Literature
  • ENGL 499: Senior Seminar

Awards

  • Stanley Pargellis Fellow, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL (Sept. 2025-May 2026)
  • NEH Summer Stipend Grant, Summer 2024
  • Residential Fellowship, VCU Humanities Research Center, Spring 2022
  • Seed Grant, College of Humanities and Sciences, VCU, 2021

Links