The Center for African & African American Studies is pleased to announce that Nandi Pointer, a PhD Student in the Department of Media Studies in the College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI), has been awarded the 2024-2025 CAAAS Alice Cleora Reeves Endowed Dissertation Fellowship.Â
Nandi Pointer is a doctoral candidate in the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado, Boulder advised by Dr. Sandra Ristovska. Her multimodal dissertation, which includes the completion of a documentary film, focuses on Black American male identity formation and its rearticulation in Black expats. She holds a Master of Journalism from the University of California at Berkeley, where she produced her first award-winning documentary Highway of Dreams. The film investigates the impact of freeway construction and suburban flight on a community in West Oakland. Focusing on her family’s experiences, Pointer paints an eloquent picture of the freeway as a modern railroad, dividing communities and increasing socioeconomic stratification. Nandi has produced content for Netflix, MTV, Fox, and TV One. Her written work has been published both in the academic journal Jump Cut and news magazines including The San Francisco Chronicle, Essence, and Upscale.
