CABMC 2026 Conference Schedule

Chair: Scott Brockman Varnado, University of California, Los Angeles

Scott Brockman Varnado, University of California, Los Angeles, “Reframing Dixie: Cultural Identity and the Production of Cinematic and Public Space in the Southern United States”

Rianna Walcott, University of Maryland, College Park, “Black Homeplaces: An Archive of Diasporic Placemaking”

Florence Madenga, Boston College, “Contesting the Tradwife: ‘Homegrown’ Content, Authenticity and Black Womanhood”

Fania Noël, CUNY Grad Center, “In the Name of the Dead Black Wife: Absence, Blackness, and Gender in Science Fiction”

Chair: Peter C. Kunze, Tulane University

Beandrea July, University of California, Los Angeles, “The Devil Finds Work: James Baldwin's Cinema of the Mind”

Noura Alaboudi, University of California, Los Angeles, “Cold War Counterpublics: Frances Williams' Black Feminist Labor in Salt of the Earth”

Camille Womack, University of Alabama, “Reclaiming Her Voice: Beah Richards’ Authorship in Conversation with her Role in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)”

Jazmine Hudson, Georgia State University, “Ryan Coogler and the Optics of Black Taste: A Pointillist Expansion of Auteur Theory”

Chair: Leah Chen, Tulane University

Leah Chen, Tulane University, “Black Women’s Life Writing in the Post-Civil War Era”

Kelly Walters, New York University and The New School, “Access + Agency: Black Typographic Power”

Blaire Bosley, Georgia Institute of Technology, “Digital Conversations with Death: An Autoethnographic Understanding of Chronic Kidney Disease and Kidney Transplants through the Lens of Black Disability Studies”

Chair: Ifeanyi Awachie, Morehouse College

Camille C. Dantzler, Xavier University of Louisiana

Tama Hamilton-Wray, Michigan State University

Jeri Hilt, artist, filmmaker, and researcher

Chair: James Bliss, Tulane University

Jeffrey McCune, University of Rochester, “Rothaniel: A Comedy of Confessions”

Brandon Manning, Texas Christian University, “‘Love with an Asterisk’: Love, Care, and Community in Rothaniel”

Chair: Allyson F. Smith, Georgia State University

Olivia Springer, University of Baltimore, “Ancestor Veneration Through Media: Keeping Our Deities Alive”

Allyson F. Smith, Georgia State University, “Cindy and Polly: Womanish Resistance to Black Class Religious Ideology in Television Movies”

Chair: Quincy Hodges, Xavier University of Louisiana

Anjanette Levert, Spelman College, “Before the Blood Flows: Teaching Sinners at the Crossroads of Horror and History”

Erika Houston Brown, Texas Woman's University, “Counterpublic Community Classrooms: A Case Study of the Broke-ish Podcast”

Quincy Hodges, Xavier University of Louisiana, “Teaching Black Cinema: Past, Present, and Practice”

RaSheeda V. Brown, University of South Carolina, “The Art of Story Telling: Using Film to Teach Undergraduate Course”

Chair: Paula Massood, Brooklyn College

Elliott H. Powell, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, “Erotic City: Prince, Porn, and Minneapolis”

I. Augustus Durham, University of Toronto, “Be Real Black for Me; or, Will the Adjective or the Adverb Still Love Me Tomorrow?”

Michael Boyce Gillespie, New York University, “You Wanted the Best, You Got the Best: Black Death, You Complete Me”

Chair: Alfred L. Martin, Jr., University of Miami

Jade Petermon, Georgia State University, “Playing in the Dark: Intra-Racial Conflict on #BlackBooktok”

Paige Ildiko, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “‘Mr. Milchick, do you really know how to play the game?!’: Reconstituting Blackness in Severance Fan Edits”

Camille DeBose, Loyola New Orleans, “The Postmodern Frame: Archive, (Re)memory, Fugitivity, Refusal”

Alfred L. Martin, Jr., University of Miami, “Making a Meal Out of Crumbs: Blackness and Partial Reception”

Chair: Thorn Chen, Tulane University

Yonatan Tewelde, Penn State Harrisburg, “From Postcards to Documentary: How Italian Colonial Visual Culture Continues to Produce Black Womanhood”

Leah Aldridge, Chapman University, “Bushman, and Black Power Cinematics”

Régine Romain, George Mason University, “Reimagining Return: Media, Memory, and the Reconstruction of Black Diasporic Identities”

Tanya Goldman, Missouri State University, “Documenting Black Communal Joy: Interracial Collaboration and the Global Circulation of Student Film Sunday on the River (1961)”

Chair: Adrian King, University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign

Chris Wiley, University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign, “Black Trans Digital Life: Storytelling and Meaning-Making”

Adrian King, University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign, “One of A Kind?: Tom Swift’s Isaac Vega, the Predictability of State-Affiliated Black Transmasculine Representation, and A Twist of Pansexuality”

Majiq Vu Mai, University of Baltimore, “Dead Man Walking: A Deadname Archive for Ancestral Elevation”

Chair: Michael Boyce Gillespie, New York University

Ellen Scott, University of California, Los Angeles, “Dorothy Dean’s Indelible 15 Minutes: Modern Film Criticism from the Throes of Black Abandon”

Rebecca Wanzo, Washington University in St. Louis, “Black Love Objects and Racial Capitalism”

Walton Muyumba, Indiana University, “James Baldwin as Critical Documentarian”

Chair: William Saas, Tulane University

Bryan M. Jenkins, University of South Carolina, and Loren Saxton Coleman, Howard University, “Doing Black Podcast Studies: Exploring the Identity and Cultural Regulation of Black Podcasts”

David Stephens, University of Memphis, “Feelings Matter: The Political Economy of Affect in Black New Media”

Jalen Ballard, Georgia State University, “‘Masculinity is just an adjective’: Understanding Black Masculinities through Black Podcasts”

Brienne Adams, Georgetown University, “Think Like After Dark: Michael Baisden and Steve Harvey’s Relational Radio Landscape”

Chair: Brandy Monk-Payton, Fordham University

Edil Hassan, University of California, Berkeley, “’When I exhibit, she exhibits’: A Performative and Poetic Reading of Marylin Nance’s Photography at Festac '77"

Justin Foster, University of California, Los Angeles, “‘I’ll Show You How a Bitch Eats!’: From Geraldine to Rasputia, Hollywood Aesthetics of ‘Excess’ in Black Drag”

Brandy Monk-Payton, Fordham University, “The Matter of Mr. Milchick: Blackness, Television, and Reparative Performance”

Shennette Garrett-Scott, Tulane University, “On Possums, Chitlins, and Tricksters; or Why Errybody Mad at Beyoncé”

Chair: J.E. Young, University of Florida

J.E. Young, University of Florida, “He/She/They So Pretty: Gender-Identity In Black Ballroom Culture And Masking Indians”

Areyana Proctor, University of Wisconsin, “Digital Dark Sousveillance and Counter-Archiving on TikTok”

Andrew Lowe M, University of Maryland, College Park, “Data, Surveillance, and Digital Enclaves in Gaming Cultures”

Yelena Dzhanova, Temple University, and Cleves Nkie Mongo, Temple University, “Scrolling Through Violence: Mixed Methods Insights on Media Exposure, Race, and Institutional Trust”

Chair: Alfred L. Martin, Jr., University of Miami

Lizette London, Emory University, “[Dark]Butterfly Effect: An Anteaesthetic Reading of Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin as an Interminable Visual Occasion”

Eli Boonin-Vail, University at Albany, “Accommodation and Abolition: The Black Image and Audience between San Quentin and Sing Sing Film Festivals”

James Pellerito, Emory University, “Paola Egonu: Race, Social Media and National Identity in Italian Sport”

Ashleigh Greene Wade, University of Virginia

Timeka N. Tounsel, University of Washington

Chair: Dewitt King, University of Notre Dame

Michael Cordova, University of California, Berkeley, “(Un)framed (B)lack: The Structural Gridlock of Filmic Form”

Rachel Williams, George Mason University, “Haunting the Narrative: Blackness and the Limits of Contemporary Political Imagination”

Dewitt King, University of Notre Dame, “Wrestling with the Glitch: Video Games, Precarity, and The Politics of Black Aesthetics”

Kalisha Cornett, Northwestern University, “Everyday Blackness and the Aesthetic of Refusal”

Chair: Corey J. Miles, Tulane University

Taylor L. Smith, University of Pennsylvania, “Remixed Modalities: Hip-Hop, Memory, and the Public Sphere”

Abel K Gutierrez, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “I Swipe the Pain Away: The Fungibility of Black Affect Through Social Media Sampling of Kendrick Lamar’s ‘United In Grief’”

Jonathan Givan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, “Platforms, Platforms, Platforms”

Chair: Tupur Chatterjee, Tulane University

Raven Maragh-Lloyd, Washington University in St. Louis, “The Afterlives of Black Tech: Tracing Nostalgia”

Tynesha McCullers, North Carolina State University, “Last Time (I Seen the Sun): Black Digital Mourning and Memorialization Through TikTok Audio Memes”

Jasmine Banks, University of Michigan, and André Brock, Georgia Institute of Technology, “Black Digital Worldbuilding, Aesthetics, and Rupture”

Catherine Knight Steele, University of Maryland, College Park, “Against Automation: The Politics of Black Play and Joy Online”

Chair: Leelannee Malin, Xavier University of Louisiana

Ariel Rogers, Northwestern University, “Framing Blackness: Mahalia Jackson and Imitation of Life”

Philana Payton, University of California, Irvine, “Negro Gentlemen and No Atom Bombs: Revisiting and Applying Cedric Robinson’s Forgeries of Memory and Meaning to Post War Hollywood”

Charles I. Nero, Bates College, “America’s Cold War Saint: Sidney Poitier and Global Catholicism”

Lauren E. Wilks, Trinity University, “I Don’t Belong to You: New Possibilities in Black Feminine Celebrity in Post-Postrace America”

Chair: Marva L. Lewis, Tulane University

Patrick Johnson, Sonoma State University, “‘You Ain’t Nothin’ Without Your History’: Remembering How Public Television Taught Black Children”

Avi Santo, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “‘The Smartest Person in the Room’: Ada Twist, Scientist and the Regulation of BlackGirlhood in STEM Media”

Brianna J. Cox, Community College of Rhode Island, “Televisual Representations of Black Girl Scientists’ Techno-Ecological Practices in Science-Fiction Narratives”

Courtney Cook, Rutgers University-Camden, “Aesthetics of Resonance in the ‘Afterlife of Slavery’: Cinematic Representations of Black Girl/Hood(s)”

Chair: Ko Bragg, Tulane University

Bradley Petty, Southern Methodist University, “Art Signals: The Rise of Black Art in Late 20th Century Broadcast Television”

Milt A. P. Moise, Rollins College, “Race-Swapping, Race-Baiting, and the Travails of Black Representation in Recent American Television Dramas”

Jeffrey W. Peterson, Georgia State University, “Who Are We Laughing At Tonight: Black Absence in 2000s American Sitcoms”

Julius Aderogba Odewabi, University of Pittsburgh, “Glocalization in Nollywood: The Case of Far From Home (2022)”

Facilitator: Kevin Winstead, University of Florida

André Brock, Georgia Institute of Technology

Safiya Noble, University of California, Los Angeles

Jessica Marie Johnson, Johns Hopkins University

Charlton McIlwain, New York University

Ngozi Harrison, University of California, Los Angeles

Chair: Kevin D. Ball, Wesleyan University

Kevin D. Ball, Wesleyan University, “Remix: Black Media and Videographic Criticism”

Eden Segbefia, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Animacy as Return”

Semassa Boko, University of California, Irvine, “Slave Talk 5”