Matthew Spellberg has been on faculty at Outer Coast since spring 2022, and Dean since fall of 2022. He co-teaches courses in Indigenous Studies, literature, and Tlingit language. His academic research focuses on Tlingit oral literature; on language and culture revitalization; and on the history of dreams and the imagination. He is a longtime (and hopefully lifelong) learner of Tlingit. He has co-led three Massive Open Online Courses in beginning Tlingit language through Outer Coast, and he collaborates regularly on Tlingit-language transcription and translation projects. He is an Editor-at-Large at Cabinet Magazine, and sits on the Planning Committee for the Sharing Our Knowledge Conference in Southeast Alaska. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. In graduate school he taught for six years in the New Jersey prisons with the Princeton University Prison Teaching Initiative. Before coming to Outer Coast he was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.
