NC State’s College of Design, Department of Media Arts, Design and Technology (MADTech) in partnership with the NCSU University Libraries is proud to welcome guest speaker Dr. Mia Mask on February 22, 2024  to Burns Auditorium for her lecture, “Overlooked Black Narratives of the American West.” 

Mia Mask is the Mary Riepma Ross Professor of Film at Vassar College. She received her Ph.D. from New York University. At Vassar, she teaches African American cinema, documentary history, seminars on the horror genre and auteurs like Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay, Charles Burnett and William Greaves. She also teaches feminist film theory, African national cinemas, and genre courses.

She is the author of Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film, published by University of Illinois Press, editor of the anthology Contemporary Black American Cinema, published by Routledge, Poitier Revisited: Reconsidering a Black Icon in the Obama Age (with Bloomsbury), and author of Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western. Her cultural commentary has been featured on National Public Radio programs “Tell Me More,” “Marketplace” and “Morning Edition,” and in documentaries for the Smithsonian Channel, the Criterion Channel and CNN’s The Movies.

The talk will include a special commentary and screening of the “War Torn Drum” (2024) directed by Dr. Derek Ham. The animated short is the first ever animated project to feature the depiction of African Americans in the West. Selected for the 2024 Oklahoma Black Film Festival and the 2024 Virginia Black Film Festival, this talk will not be streamed via zoom or recorded.