Michelle Lanier

Professor

Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill & NC Historic Sites

Michelle Lanier is an AfroCarolina folklorist. A graduate of Spelman and UNC-Chapel Hill, in 2018, Michelle became director of North Carolina’s historic sites, a constellation of 26 museum spaces, historic structures, and landscapes including the birthplace of Harriet Jacobs and the final resting place of Charlotte Hawkins Brown. With her focus on the concept of womanist cartography, Michelle illuminates the lives of Black women of the U.S. South through her writing and curation. Michelle is on faculty at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and has advised on numerous films including Mossville: When Great Trees Fall, which she executive produced. In March of 2024, Michelle will be inviting thought leaders to Edenton, North Carolina to engage the legacies of Harriet Jacobs through art, memory, futurity and ecologies of witness. This convening, “A Song for Harriet Jacobs,” will beckon us beyond fugitivity and beyond the garret where Jacobs hid.