Walter Greason is among the most prominent historians, educators, and urbanists in the United States. He has spent the past 30 years speaking to audiences in dozens of states, on over 100 college and high school campuses, at dozens of professional and academic conferences, and to community groups across the country.
His most recent projects include professional development for organizations creating anti-racism initiatives in response to the global protests for systemic change; leadership of the T. Thomas Fortune Foundation (responsible for rehabilitation of a National Historic Landmark); research on Afrofuturism in the creation of the Wakanda Syllabus (for Marvel's Black Panther); and ongoing data collection about comparative economic history (similar to the 1619 Project by the New York Times).
Walter David Greason is a professor of world history, American history, and economic history at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. His two books, Suburban Erasure: How the Suburbs Ended the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey and The Path to Freedom: Black Families in New Jersey, connect undiscovered local elements of the black freedom movement with global trends in economic development. In 1996, Greason was recognized as a contemporary Black History Maker for his work to advance racial integration at Villanova University. In 2011, he was honored as an “International Master Teacher” for his innovative techniques in undergraduate student research.
Dr. Walter Greason is a Dean Emeritus of the Honors School and an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Counseling and Leadership at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey.
His work focuses on racial enslavement, segregation, and globalization in world economic history.
Dr. Greason has written or edited six books, in addition to several interactive public history projects and over a hundred academic articles and essays.
Black Speculative Arts are the ways the people of the African diaspora have re-imagined the world to create greater freedom through art, technology, language, and culture. Often called "Afrofuturism", it has emerged as one of the generative forces of global culture over the last four centuries. Dr. Greason is a pioneer in the field whose ideas have shaped many of the most popular expressions of this movement, including Marvel Studios' Black Panther. In 2020, he launched an interactive, educational game titled "Sojourners Trail" that explores the movement in detail for 250 years. It is based on the teaching manual titled "Cities Imagined", published in 2018.
Based on the idea of world system theory by Immanuel Wallerstein and the methods of economic valuation developed by Partha DasGupta, Dr. Greason has created an asset map across world history that helps people understand the transformation of macroeconomic systems over time. He has published elements of the research in a series of infographics over the last four years, as well as in a teaching manual titled "American Economy." Its principles have also informed the work in two other publications, "Industrial Segregation" and "Planning Future Cities."
Afrofuturist Design is the name of a 2019 exhibit about the Black Speculative Arts Movement, hosted by the Murry and Leonie Guggenheim Memorial Library at Monmouth University as well as the T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center in Red Bank, New Jersey, and the Main Street Art Gallery in Freehold, New Jersey. It featured the discussion of "The Black Brain Belt" - a cluster of communities where Black scientists, technicians, and engineers lived between 1945 and 2005 -- a real version of the fictional Wakanda in the Marvel Universe.
The 'worldprofessor' username is Dr. Greason's Twitter account. It is based on the design of the account to reach a global audience with advanced and emerging academic content. It is also a reference to Dr. Greason's 2011 grant from the Mellon Foundation (through Ursinus College) where he attended Ken Bain's workshop on best practices in higher education. Several of the attendees referred to Dr. Greason as an 'international master teacher' based on his use of supervised research experiences as a regular feature of undergraduate coursework. The 2017 Racial Violence Syllabus reached 400 million users, was translated into seven languages, and has transformed the professions of public history and digital humanities as seen in projects like the African American Intellectual History Society's Black Perspectives and the Urban History Association's Metropole."
