Maurika Smutherman

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Bio

Maurika Smutherman is a PhD candidate in the department of Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at North Carolina State University (NCSU) where she serves as the graduate extension assistant for the NCSU Libraries’ Digital Media Lab. Her research focuses on intersections between materiality, critical making, technology, and Black feminist thought to situate Black women’s and girls’ technical expertise as central to the history of human creativity and technological innovation.

Publications

Smutherman, M. & Wesley, D. (2024). Digitized: The visual rhetoric of Black feminist storytellers on Instagram. In S. K. Haydel & D. Stamps (Eds.), Black Identities & Media. LSU Press. (Forthcoming)

Wesley, D., Pandya, M., & Smutherman, M. (2024). (Re)Imagining communication in a digital world. In Hummel, G. (Ed.), Perspectives on Communication. Kendall Hunt. (Forthcoming)

Smutherman, M.(2024). Braiding the Atlas: Black feminist cartography and extensions of care in Crooklyn‘s story maps. Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. (Forthcoming)

Smutherman, M. (2022). The ethics of online memes. In J. Lipschultz (Ed.), Social Media Law and Ethics (pp. 56-61). Routledge.

Presentations

“A Black History of Femme Beatmaking: Reflections on Doing Black Digital Humanities,” Digital Humanities Institute (2024)

“Engaging in Marginalia Making,” Design Forge (2024)

“Reimagining the Digital World: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” NCA Convention (2023)

“Graduate Assistants in Creative Technology Spaces,” ACTAL Conference (2023)

“Black Feminist Ecologies and Materialisms,” Black Women’s Studies Association Symposium (2023)

“Building Beloved Community in College Classrooms,” Dissident Feminisms: Inaugural bell hooks Symposium (2023)

“Marginalia Making: Critical Care as Critical Making Workshop Series at NCSU,” HASTAC Conference (2023)

“Amplifying Voices of Black Communities: The Power of Storytelling,” Black Research Symposium (2023)

“Developing Digital Media Assignments for Hybrid Learning: Perspectives and Approaches from an Instructor and Student,” ACTAL Conference (2022)

“Subverting the Algorithm: The Digital Activism of Black Twitter,” Computers and Writing Conference (2022)

“Decolonizing the Literate Subject: A Genealogy of Black Multiliteracies,” NCSU Graduate Research Symposium (2022) 

“Embracing Diverse Ways of Being and Knowing,” CRDM Symposium (2022)

“Multimodality in the HBCU Writing Center: Communicating for the Future,” CCCC (2022)

“For Us by Us: The Cultural Uniqueness of Writing Centers at HBCUs,” Southeastern Writing Center Association Conference (2022)

“Integrating Digital and Mobile Learning Strategies into HBCU College Courses,” The Learning Revolution Emergency Home Learning Summit (November 2020)

Commissions 

2023 – North Carolina State University, Envisioning the Future of Charlotte Through the Past and Present, digital collage, Raleigh, NC

Workshops and Exhibitions

2024 – Black History Month Femme Beat-Making Showcase and Workshop, North Carolina State University Libraries

2023 – Marginalia Making Sneakertag Workshop, North Carolina State University

2023 – Digital Scrapbooking and Afropresentism, NCSU African American Cultural Center Black Research Symposium

Area(s) of Expertise

I use critical theory and making to explore intersections between communication, culture, and technology from a Black Feminist, materialist perspective. My research is an attempt to make tangible and/or visible the ways Black women and girls produce and engage with technologies that are underrepresented in Western studies of communication and media. My forthcoming dissertation proposes the concept of BlackFem beatmaking as a tactile digital storytelling practice where historically feminized modes of making are central to the preservation and transmission of cultural knowledge.