Michele Elam

Michele Elam is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities in the English Department at Stanford University, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence https://hai.stanford.edu and a Race & Technology Affiliate at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity https://ccsre.stanford.edu/race-technology-initiative. Former Director of African & African American Studies, Elam is also affiliated with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research and with the Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute.
Elam’s research in interdisciplinary humanities connects literature and the social sciences in order to examine changing cultural interpretations of gender and race. Her work is informed by the understanding that racial perception and identification in particular impacts outcomes for health, wealth and social justice. More recently, her scholarship examines intersections of race, technology and the arts. “Race Making in the Age of AI,” her most recent book project, considers how the humanities and arts function as key crucibles through which to frame and address urgent social questions about equity and social justice in socially transformative technologies. Her undergraduate interdisciplinary courses, "AI + Arts + Activism," and "Black Mirror: Representing Race & Gender in AI" represent efforts to introduce these issues early in students' careers at Stanford.
Elam’s books include Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2003), The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium (Stanford University Press, 2011), and The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin (Cambridge University Press, 2015). She has published widely on race and culture including articles in PMLA, African American Review, American Literature, Theatre Journal, Genre, Daedelus: The Journal of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in edited volumes such as Feminist AI. Her op-eds appear in CNN, Huffington Post, and Boston Review. She was awarded the 2018 Darwin T. Turner Award for Outstanding Scholarship by the African American Literature and Culture Society.
At Stanford, she has served as the Director of the interdisciplinary graduate Program in Modern Thought and Literature (MTL), the Director of African & African American Studies, and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the English Department. Nationally, Elam has served as Chair of the Executive Committee for the Black Literatures & Culture Division of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and on the Executive Council for the American Literature Society at MLA. She is currently on the Advisory Boards of Stanford’s Program in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Studies, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity, and serves on the Director’s Council for the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school).
Dedicated to teaching, Elam has been awarded the 2018 Walter J. Gores Award, the University's highest teaching honor. She is also thrice the recipient of the St Clair Drake Outstanding Teaching Award at Stanford (2004, 2006, 2015) and has twice received the Faculty Award for Outstanding Service to Undergraduate Students as a Teacher, Advisor and Mentor from the Program in Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity (2013, 2018), among her other teaching awards.
Undergraduate and graduate seminars include:
- Arts + AI + Activism
- Black Mirror: Representing Race & Gender in AI
- The Harlem Renaissance
- James Baldwin & American Culture
- Got Genius? W.E.B. Du Bois
- Toni Morrison & the Occasion of Feminism
- Gender Studies for the 21st Century
- Mixed Race Politics & Culture
- Mixed Race in the U.S & South Africa
- Narratives of Enslavement & Theories of Redress
- Whiteness
Info Links
Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
African & African American Studies
Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Modern Thought and Literature
Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity
Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school)
“How Art Propels Occupy Wall Street,” CNN Opinion
“2010 Census: Think Twice, Check Once,” Huffington Post
Contact
Office Hours
Research Interests
Courses
Spring 2023-2024
Mixed-Race Politics and Culture
James Baldwin and American Culture
Winter 2023-2024
Black Mirror: A.I. Activism
Harlem Renaissance
Spring 2022-2023
Black Mirror: Representations of Race & Gender in AI
Activism Art
Spring 2021-2022
Introduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature (AFRICAAM 43, AMSTUD 12A)
A.I.-Activism-Art (ARTHIST 168A, CSRE 106A, SYMSYS 168A)
Spring 2020-2021
ENGLISH 106A: A.I.-Activism-Art (ARTHIST 168A, CSRE 106A, SYMSYS 168A)
Winter 2020-2021
Introduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature
James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature (AFRICAAM 159, FEMGEN 159)
Autumn 2020-2021
Mixed-Race Politics and Culture
Winter 2018-2019
Theorizing Hybridity: Whiteness
Autumn 2018-2019
Harlem Renaissance
Winter 2018-2019
Introduction to English III: Introduction to African American Literature (AFRICAAM 43, AMSTUD 12A)
Autumn 2017-2018
Harlem Renaissance and Modernism
Winter 2017-2018
Mixed-Race Politics and Culture (AFRICAAM 226, AMSTUD 152K, CSRE 152K)
Winter 2017-2018
James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature (AFRICAAM 159, FEMGEN 159)