Mwalim Peters

Mwalim (MJ Peters), MS, MFA is an interdisciplinary scholar, performer, and cultural historian whose work bridges academia, music, and theatre. He is a tenured Associate Professor of English and Black Studies at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he teaches courses in African Diasporic and Indigenous expressive traditions, folklore, oral history, and creative writing. His scholarship and creative practice explore the cultural politics of sound, space, memory, and community. He is also a citizen and elder of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe.

Mwalim is a founding member of WAMPTRONICA, a nine-member underground dance music collective blending Deep Afro Jazz House, soul, funk, and Indigenous musical traditions. As a DJ and producer, he helps curate immersive dance experiences rooted in the history of Black, Latino, and LGBTQ underground club culture. He also co-produces and co-hosts the weekly radio show and podcast From the Underground with WAMPTRONICA, which highlights deep, soulful, and globally influenced house music (https://rss.com/podcasts/fromtheundergroundwith-wamptronica/).

He is the Founding Artistic Director of Oversoul Theatre Collective, Inc., a nonprofit arts organization formed in 1994, and dedicated to expanding access to performance and media arts while amplifying Black and Indigenous voices through theatre and community-based creative work.

In the classroom, Mwalim brings together scholarship, artistic practice, and lived cultural experience to create spaces of thoughtful inquiry and dynamic exchange. His teaching invites students to listen closely, think critically;  through conversation, storytelling, and critical analysis, engaged participants leave with a deeper appreciation for the ways art, history, and social life remain profoundly interconnected.