AAS is launching a new section of our newsletter, Departmental Spotlights, organized by Graduate Student Endria Richardson. Our first spotlight features an interview with graduate student Karina Karbo-Wright.
Tell me about your work (whatever “work” means to you). What do you care about in the world, and how did you come to care about it?
My research interest is in Black film - specifically this intersection of horror and trauma that Black creatives and spectators consume from. Exploring these articulations gives deeper insight into who is considered when we say “spectator” and “audience,” and I hope to problematize the very concept of “genre” as it pertains to film. I also want to explore how Blackness is continued, defined, and negotiated by Black creatives by exploring trauma through the lens of horror. The horror genre provides me with the tools to explore this framework I’m toying with: living “in” the terror and living “as” the terror.
Something I say often is that I don't have a dream job because I don't dream of working. However, there is a lot of labor I do out of love! I love doing things for people and compensation is not important to me (i.e. redoing our graduate lounge!) - so care to me is not transactional or not even work but labor out of love. So now, I think being in the program is a labor of love for myself. It is going to be incredibly hard work and I am going to crash out a lot, but this last semester has cemented that this is what I love to do - and I'm not going to change the world with a paper about Black horror/terror - but I am going to be laboring for something I care about/enjoy (I use labor here to refer to the physical/mental/emotional actions that go into doing research, not the labor that the university will continue to extract and consume from me.) Anyway, no need to embellish anymore, but to me, I lead with love (and with love comes labor) even though I know that these systems will exploit this disposition. But I guess the ability to maintain that care-centered approach is something I continue to strive to do (but it's freaking hard because of the world we live in).
Who do you love? Writers, thinkers, artists, parents, friends—who has inspired you to think and write the way that you do?
I love this question! I think about this a lot - how did I get interested in film and Blackness in cinema? And the answer is my brother, Gabriel (I have two - this is my blood-related brother and not my childhood friend whom I call brother!). Both my brother and I have autism, and because of ableism, our moms were very concerned about us being able to connect, so we hung out a lot. I used to think back on our childhood and be sad that we weren't like typical siblings, but when I was a senior in undergrad, I was doing a panel to discuss my thesis, and I got these two questions back to back: "What is the most sentimental item you own?" (the icebreaker) and "When were you first interested in critically studying film?" And with those two questions, I realized that both answers were because of my brother! When I turned three and he was five, he saved up his Christmas money to buy me a Hello Kitty build-a-bear because I was (and still am) obsessed with Hello Kitty - that is my most sentimental item. And it was my brother that got me interested in studying film - we went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past with our dad, and my brother tore that movie up. He asked me what I thought, and I told him I really liked it (I still do...). He was disgusted, quickly grabbed my shoulders and said, "You are too smart to be a sheep, Ri." For the next couple of months, he forced me to watch film critique and theory videos on YouTube. That was the most fun we had ever had together, and I realized it was because we think so similarly. So, when I write about film, I think of him and how he inspired this path. And every time I really engage, I feel like he is proud of me! All of this is why I have a Hello Kitty bow tattoo on my finger.
What are you reading (or watching, or listening to) lately?
I read so much fiction! But, I will use this opportunity to discuss Wicked LOL. I think that on the surface it is a fantastic musical, and Cynthia Erivo is truly one of, if not the, most talented triple threats of this century. And I kind of liked the way the story portrayed how people are vilified/demonized for even naming what is wrong in our world and how love/friendship is not enough to stop the bootlickers from bootlicking! However, looking deeper, I think all of the dynamics are interesting here: how the Wicked Witch has typically been played by a white woman, why Galinda's whiteness is used in such a way, and what is the purpose of complicating a fundamental film/narrative of the white Western cannon (which just reaffirms white sovereignty by recreating an imaginary/fantastical world in which whiteness is still the guiding structure). Anyway no more rambling BUT, after the film, Sophia asked me, "Where is the black in Wicked?", seriously but also unseriously because we ki with Irene about things like this. In reality I knew the answer immediately: that the black is literally the animals. So I was basically like, "What the EFF does that mean?" So I think the film is fascinating because the message it is trying to send is really anti-Black packaged within neoliberal multi-million dollar movie magic, and I think the film and the reactions to it reveal a lot. Anyway, I find those types of films so fascinating and interesting, so that is also what I do for work.
Is there anything else you’d like your colleagues to know about you?
I will take this moment to just share a picture of my dog. She means everything to me, and I love her. Her name is Bea and she turns two on February 15th.