Wills Glasspiegel

Wills Glasspiegel is a Chicago-based multimedia artist, filmmaker, scholar, and community organizer. He earned a PhD from Yale University’s African American Studies and American Studies departments in 2024, with a dissertation titled Geometry of a Ghost: Chicago Footwork and the Sound System Continuum. His scholarship explores Black electronic music and dance history in connection with social movements and community organizing through the arts. He was a keynote speaker at the Japan Black Studies Association’s 70th anniversary at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo (2024). His forthcoming essays include “Below as Above: Chicago Footwork 1986–Present” (University of Illinois Press, 2025) and “In the Break of Images” (Aperture, 2025). His 2023 film Skywalkers is part of the City of Chicago’s public art collection at O’Hare Airport, while his 2021 projection film Footnotes garnered praise from the New York Times, Time Out, and Chicago Tribune. A co-recipient of a 2014 Peabody Award for contributions to Afropop Worldwide, he co-founded and co-directs Open the Circle, an arts and racial justice nonprofit supported by the NEA, MacArthur, and Joyce Foundations since 2017.