Validly Undefined: Bodies, Catharsis, and Reflection in Black Women's Media Production

CAMPUS COMMUNITY ONLY | Cognizant of histories in which Black women's bodies were not legally considered 'their own,' and of media systems that continue to widely discount and hypersexualize Black women characters, this presentation examines why and how some Black women media-makers choose to practice methods and create works that intentionally center their bodies - albeit on differently rationalized terms. In fact, many Black women media-makers weave reflections on self and society into their production processes, using 'making' itself as means to make better sense of powerful lived experiences by transforming them into more outwardly coherent forms: here, media visuals, audio, plotlines, techniques, and/or aesthetics. Overall, this presentation analyzes constructed spaces and acts of media production as sites of catharsis, reflection and internal dialogue.

Bio: A 2009 Mellon Mays Fellow and 2014 NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Marlaina Martin earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Rutgers University in May 2019. Martin’s research interests include critical race studies, body and embodiment studies, Black feminist theory, and anthropologies of race, gender, and media. Martin’s book-in-progress Visionary: Erasure, Navigation and Imagining among Black Women Media-Makers examines learning, negotiating, and community-building practices of NYC-based Black women independent media-makers. She held a 2019-2020 Visual Culture Postdoctoral Fellowship with The Phillips Collection and University of Maryland, College Park’s Department of Anthropology before transitioning into the latter with the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship that she currently holds.