Debbie-Marie

Debbie-Marie was awarded an Academic Year URG from the OUR in the fall and produced a podcast centering Black horror and fiction as it relates to different periods in American history. Debbie-Marie cites her inspiration from taking a literature class in AFAM last spring, “…we read some black speculative horror fiction that stuck with me! The Black protagonists I read about had this viscerally emotional racial experience that immediately catapulted me backward in time. 150 years or so ago, Charles Chesnut was writing gothic realist short stories that played with white society’s racist assumptions about the color line. I felt a spark of continuity between how Black horror and Black gothic fiction like Chesnutt’s each constructed the “monster” in their tales. Then I immediately understood that that Black literary tradition was passed down, and that ‘Black fear,’ as located in Black horror, is doing different things than your average white-centered scary movie. Jordan Peele was onto something.”

Coming from a journalism background, Debbie-Marie wanted to center college-aged people and Black and Brown academics. With this goal in mind, Debbie-Marie had their eyes set on developing this project into a podcast. She said, “I chose to use a podcast to host my research for a few reasons. First, I love audio, and I wanted my work to be accessible, but I also wanted the freedom of solo producing a short podcast series. I never had the opportunity to dedicate that much time toward an audio journalism project in undergrad. So my decision to apply to a URG for my final quarter allowed me to tune more deeply into my own love for Black literature, Black voices, and Black conversations.”