Michele Prettyman is an Assistant Professor of Media and Africana Studies at Mercer University, a scholar of African American cinema and visual culture, and a media consultant. Recently she published an essay in The Lemonade Reader entitled, “To Feel Like A “Natural Woman”: Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé and the ecological spirituality of Lemonade” and she co-edited and contributed to a “Close Up” series in Black Camera journal focusing on black independent filmmaking in New York. She teaches courses in digital storytelling, race, gender and media, film studies, Southern film, and screenwriting, among others and her work has been presented at diverse forums including the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the Transforming Public History Conference, the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP), the World Picture Conference, and the National Council of Black Studies. Michele is a contributor and member of the advisory board for ‘liquid blackness’: A Research Project on Blackness and Aesthetics housed at Georgia State University.
