Maurika Smutherman

Bio

Maurika Smutherman is a PhD student 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 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.

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

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

Presentations

“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)

“Digital Scrapbooking and Afropresentism,” Black Research Symposium (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)

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

“Multimodality in the HBCU Writing Center: Communicating for the Future,” Annual Convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) (March 2022)