Sklar Entertainment Innovation Fellow, 2021.
Zama is the first recipient of the Marty Sklar Entertainment Innovation Fellowship. In her third year in the Cinema and Media Studies PhD program, she was chosen to participate in major collaborative projects at REMAP that interweave the physical and digital worlds to share new kinds of stories, and engage with the legacy and future of themed entertainment. She previously earned an MA from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and worked in the South African broadcasting industry. Past honors include The Teshome Gabriel Memorial Award, the Mariame Kaba Graduate Fellowship in Black Feminist Research, and membership in the UCLA chapter of the Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society.
Zama describes her theoretical lens as informed by African feminist thinking, queer diaspora studies, decolonial studies and Black visual cultures. Her research aims to contribute to a legacy within visual cultures that has often been preoccupied with interrogating notions of the spectacle, the politics of representation and the possibility of a Black feminist gaze. More specifically, her research interests are preoccupied with making sense of the subversive media practices of Black women media-makers in the African diaspora. Her research does this by centering Black feminisms as a generative theoretical tool and epistemology for envisioning a radical, decolonial and a fundamentally liberatory Black visual aesthetic.
The theme of the inaugural 2021 Fellowship, and Zama’s work with REMAP, will focus on leadership within research and production that use emerging technologies and alternative modes of making to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion in creative and scholarly work at UCLA TFT during the COVID-19 pandemic.