Nicoletta Vangelisti

About Me

I am an artist, producer, researcher and writer. I am currently completing a PhD (ABD) in Communication with a specialization in Critical Gender Studies at the University of California, San Diego. I have also worked as an Executive Chef, a professional golf caddie, bartender, consultant, and newspaper columnist. I am a lifelong traveller who has always followed the path my heart revealed through my insatiable curiosity about ways to live life and the call of a good story.My dissertation, titled Making at the Margins: Value, Community & Philanthropy in Alternative Independent Filmmaking, addresses the experiences of filmmakers and creative workers who participate in alternative independent filmmaking in the U.S.. Centering the experiences and knowledge of cultural laborers is an essential first step in a larger research agenda which aims to make visible the economic and cultural relationship between philanthropy, cultural laborers and marginalized communities. Facing continued exclusion from commercial film careers, resources and distribution, alternative independent cinema is an act of resistance against the legal, political and ideological mechanisms which maintain systems of oppression and cultural hegemony. My initial findings reveal cultural labor at the margins is both a calling to serve communities and an outcome of discriminatory systems preventing access to commercial industries. Film projects deemed economically valueless by mainstream industry are incredibly valuable to those engaged in creative collaborative work as a practice which informs political and personal identity and builds community through making and sharing representations of everyday life at the margins conspicuously absent from mainstream media.When I am not engaged with my film and academic work, I love to have long, animated [gestures in Italian] conversations about art and life, read as much as I can, take advantage of Southern California weather by swimming and going on hikes and perhaps watching too much Star Trek. I believe living is a practice that requires courage to make space for joy and am dedicated to being in service to others. Together we can shape the possible visions for an equitable and liberated future.

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Research, Experience & Public Outreach

Education

PhD, Communication (ABD) expected completion 2024
Chairs: Dr. Boatema Boateng, Prof. Zeinabu Davis
University of California San DiegoMA, International Studies (2017)
Advisor, Prof. Sean Jacobs
The New SchoolCertificate, Palestinian and Arabic Studies (2015)
Bierzeit UniversityBA, Liberal Arts (2015)
The New School

Research Interests

Political economy of philanthropic and community resourced creative collaborative labor and cultural production with emphases on identity, representation, community, practice, agency, critical gender studies, interdisciplinary qualitative methods, Black socialist feminisms, ethics of storytelling, queer studies, and transgender marxism.

Research Statement

My research examines the conditions of everyday creative collaborative media practices at the margins, with an emphasis on filmmaking, podcasting and digital storytelling. My current research location is in the world of alternative independent cinema where filmmakers and creative workers engage in film projects outside of the commercial arena and are often dependent upon philanthropic and community support for the resources required to produce a film. While there is abundant research on labor and culture within commercially sustained entertainment production (studio and independent films, television and streaming content) very little attention, if any, is given to the world of community-based and nonprofit funded film and new media production. The nonprofit world as a third space - neither government or business - manages enormous funds conditioned by their own bylaws and ideologies about social good. Billions of dollars are still earmarked each year for cultural institutions such as alternative private education, universities and museums. A smaller but not insignificant amount of funding is given to community based cultural projects, including filmmaking.My overarching inquiry probes how philanthropy conditions the culture produced at the social margins and the outcomes of nonprofit funded cultural production. In a contemporary world which relies heavily on the language of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to shape narratives around philanthropic “impact,” are these organizations achieving their stated goal? Is there mis-communication between nonprofit managers and artists over how to affect positive social change? Are there alternative goals hidden from cultural producers who devote a considerable amount of uncompensated labor to the process of grant writing? This is a large project that will require more researchers than myself to clarify and reveal what is occurring within relationships between cultural producers, their communities and nonprofit organizations. I enter this inquiry by working to establish a view of how artists, cultural producers and creative workers engaged in community based, non commercial projects express value in their labor and in the cultural objects they produce.My research is guided by the literature and practices of socialist Black feminism which calls for the liberation of Black women as the condition for universal liberation, and through Equitable Partnership, which requires the researcher and participants to maintain communication about relationships to power, external life circumstances and resource requirements for participation. My role as a researcher is in service to the communities I partner with. The people I partner with maintain the ability to pause or stop any academic and/or media materials we produce, holding my institutional power accountable to the values and desires of the community.

Invited Presentations

“Seven of Nine, Adult Adolescence & Gender Transition.” San Diego Public Library, 2023.“Reading is Fundamental: A Community Address.” Rainbow Graduation, UCSD, 2023.“Navigating Our Identities at Work.” The annual graduate student symposium, The New
School, 2021“Resource Transfer and Allyship as Media Practice in the Occupied Territories of Palestine”
Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environmental Studies, February 2017“International Allyship: Decolonial and Antiracist Student Media Movements in New York City”
Birzeit University, July 2016

Public Events Organized & Produced

"Queer (Trans)Indigenous Constellations: A Celebration and Conference for queer/trans/
two-spirit/Indigiqueer BIPOC in media, art and research." A first of its kind university supported conference centered on bringing together research and art practitioners to build community and share knowledge. (Scheduled for November 2024)“Paris is Burning.” Public film presentation and roundtable conversation with San Diego drag performers Amber St. James and Nebula. The Loft at UCSD, 2022.“The Nicholas Papadopoulos Endowed Lecture in Gay & Lesbian Studies Featuring Black Women and Queer Filmmakers.” With Michelle Parkerson, Zeinabu Davis, Yvonne Shirley, Stefani Sontage, and Chanelle Pearson. Annual keynote event for the Critical Gender Studies Program, University of California San Diego, 2022.“On writing the self and transgender identity in the academy.” With McKenzie Wark. Critical Gender Studies program, University of California, San Diego, 2022.“Podcast Platforms & Transgender Mutual Aid.” Host. Public talk with known transgender podcast hosts and producers Diamond Stylz, Tuck Woodstock, Breanna Jenkins and Xe De Fischer. The Democracy Lab and Critical Gender Studies, UCSD, 2021.“The Nicholas Papadopoulos Endowed Lecture in Gay & Lesbian Studies Featuring the film Disclosure.” Moderator. Annual keynote event for the Critical Gender Studies Program, University of California San Diego, 2021.

Roll Call

All the people and organizations who continue to inspire me each and every day I take breath:

Hasheemah Afaneh ~ Writer
Patrick Anderson ~ Writer, Theorist, Mentor
Boatema Boateng ~ Artist, Theorist, Mentor
Peggy Cosgrave~ Actress, Traveller, Lover of Food, Home
Matthew Daniels ~ Artist, Healer, Multi-life Companion
Zeinabu irene Davis ~ Filmmaker, Professor, Mentor, Aries
Lito Espudo ~ Sag, Fag, Family, Lover of Live Jazz Events
Anvar Hassanpour ~ Filmmaker, Marxist, Comrade
Emeer Hassanpour ~ Filmmaker, Charmer, Debater
Erin Hill ~ Writer, Historian, Hollywood Girlboss
Alexis Hithe ~ Artist, Girlboss, Goddess
Asher Honish ~ Photographer, Double Cancer
Hazel Katz ~ Filmmaker, Visual Artist, Virgo
Camille Lenain ~ Photographer, Traveller, Critic of Life
Teresa Naval ~ Family, Grad Companion, Boxes and Zines
Palestine ~ The Land & Her People (and food!)
Roy Pérez ~ Writer, Theorist, Mentor to all girls like us
Dr. Tina Rafidi ~ Educator, Academic, Activist, Mentor

Contact

Nicoletta Vangelisti
Department of Communication #0503
Media Center and Communication Building (MCC)
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA
92093-0503

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