Greetings! My name is Imani and I am a black African American middle class woman in a state of questioning. I am apprehensive of labeling myself, since I view sexual orientation as fluid.
As a Gallatin grad student, I highlight the importance of cultural preservation through storytelling. Storytelling takes on many different forms, from advertising to folklore. I study storytelling as a means to preserve marginalized cultures, specifically focusing on the representation of black women in media. Throughout my career, I have conducted interviews through a variety of mediums from identity research as a researcher at NYU Wagner to interviewing to produce stories as a Social Impact fellow in Flint, MI. In Flint, I received the opportunity to transform the interviews into a storytelling project, Continuing the Conversation: Black Women Activism in Flint.
My thesis explores the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality representation in the 1980s The Women of Brewster Place literature-to-television miniseries. While working on my storytelling projects with City Lore, I will also be solidifying my thesis work. The commonalities of both projects are their parallel focuses on the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through the representation of marginalized communities.
My Gallatin Global Urban Practice site is City Lore, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultural preservation work. I will be working with Executive Director, Molly Garfinkel, to produce stories to compliment their Place Matters initiative.
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Before my admittance to NYU Gallatin, I attended Fordham University and graduated from their Urban Studies program. Through this program. along with various internships and volunteer projects ranging from Global Outreach (GO!) New York to a South Bronx based organization called Mothers on the Move, I gained an intensive understanding of the social and economic condition of the South Bronx. My current understanding, while not provided through lived experiences, comes from a combination of hands-on experience and formal education. The most honest experiences that I’ve had were through the volunteer work that I have conducted.
Through my Urban Studies program, I was mentored by Dr. Mark Naison, a well-established professor of the African American Studies department. He has extended beyond the classroom to be active in the Bronx community, providing opportunities and outlets for residents of the community to be visible and speak about their loved experiences. Prior to entering the Senior Thesis Seminar with Dr. Mark Naison, I was a Global Outreach (GO!) NYC team member, in which I conducted services projects throughout New York City as a part of a team. In this experience, I was introduced to Mothers on the Move, the community organization that became the center of my Urban Studies Senior Thesis. My positionality as a Urban Studies researcher who lived and studied in the Bronx as well as a community engagement professional with nonprofit experience in New York City has given me a distinctive foundation for my storytelling and oral history work with City Lore.
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