Michelle Apotsos is an Associate Professor of Art History at Williams College, specializing in architecture and Afro-Islamic creative production. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 2013 and has taught courses on sustainable architecture, Islamic art in Africa, Africa in Western cinema, and African art in Western museum spaces. She has also published in numerous journals including African Arts, the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, and Material Culture Review. She is the author of Architecture, Islam, and Identity in West Africa: Lessons from Larabanga (Routledge, 2016) and The Masjid in Contemporary Islamic Africa (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and her current projects focus on the impacts of grassroots housing initiatives in South African townships, the effect of tourism on nationalistic landscapes in South Africa, and the presence of race-based hierarchies within thirteenth-century mosque design in Mali.
