Dr. Marcus Anthony Brock (he/him) is a teacher-scholar, writer, researcher, and purveyor of culture, drawing critical segues among race, identity, art, and our evolving humanity through storytelling. Griot-descended from Laurel, Mississippi—a keeper of things—a Native Son—and a dreamer from Compton, California.

Currently, he is Assistant Professor, Composition and Rhetoric at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) where he develops courses in writing, cultural studies, LGBTQ+ studies, and African American Literature. For the 2022-24 academic years, he is a Scholar in Residence at The Chapin School. Marcus is also working on his forthcoming book project, Sensational Oppression: Revolutionary Aspirations for Black Bodies, Queer Kinship, and Resistance in Visual Culture. He has also taught literature at The Cooper Union and “Race, Class, and Gender in Media” at Marymount Manhattan College. Former teaching appointments include his tenure at Sarah Lawrence College as Guest Faculty, African American Literature and as a Writing Assistant for CUNY Start at Kingsborough Community College.

With a career that spans arts education advocacy, academia, development, entertainment, communications, media, and publishing, he has attained a holistic approach seen throughout both academic and artistic works. His successful management of high-profile clientele has been sustained in event and campaign management, client cultivation, and national media placements. By harnessing a career that bridges a holistic approach to scholarship and creative industries, his work is consistently immersed in a transcultural dialogue that manifests through everyday culture and media—for the culture.

In collaboration with a team of artists, media-makers, and family, Marcus was a consulting producer for the documentary, Mustache Mondays (2021), on PBS/KCET’s Artbound, honoring the legacy of the long-time Los Angeles queer party, the life of co-founder, Ignacio “Nacho” Nava, Jr., and the cultural and historical impact the gathering created in Southern California.

He has been a long-time contributing writer for The Tenth magazine centering a queer lens on visual culture and cultural studies, publishing essays “Call Me Kerosene,” “Urban Fashions of Yore," “2020: An Aria for Staying the Course,” and “The Urgency: Tabula Rasa for Black Grief in America.” He has also written for GLAAD, EBONY.com, Quartz, Afropunk, and the Medium publication, P.S. I Love You. Also, he has held writing residencies at the Spruceton Inn and as a Black Lives Matter Writer-in-Residence at Paragraph in New York City.

Deeply rooted, his writing appears as a series of vignettes about realities and unrealities—spun up in an Afrofuture Renaissance. While weathering the days, deciphering beauty from the macabre in suspenders, spats, and an oh-so-funky beat, he holds fast to himself. And as an Afrofuturist, a teacher, an attaché, and a flâneur-ing postmodern vagabond, he is on a quest for liberation.

Marcus completed his Ph.D. at Stony Brook University in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies with a Certificate in Africana Studies. During his doctoral studies, he was a recipient of a prestigious Dr. W. Burghardt Turner Fellowship. He received a B.A. in American Literature and Culture with a minor in Political Science from UCLA. While working full-time in the music industry, he received a Master of Communication Management with a focus on Media and Entertainment Management from the University of Southern California (USC), Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.