Z Allard ’23 (he/him) is a Human Physiology major from Brooklyn, NY! He is a self-taught photographer and loves to explore how much emotion he can convey with his work. Portraiture is his favorite genre with a stylized approach –– using colors, artificial lights, and projectors. Z takes inspiration from different sources including his peers. Last spring, Z was inspired to combine his love for both creativity and fitness with a photo project for the Men’s Basketball team and now is looking to continue it this year in the form of a full-length video documentary. Common themes of his work include nostalgia, the idea of time, connection, and auras. His goals include seeing how far he can push himself with his creative portraiture and increasing his video skills.
Will Carter ’23 (they/he) is a Studio Art major with a concentration in Fibers and a minor in Black Studies from the Hudson River Valley. Inspired by his family, cultures, and the communities that he belongs to, Carter creates quilts, songs, poems, and performances to express his reverence for the world in which he finds his purpose. Though their art wasn’t initially intended to be documentary, they quickly realized that creating work that speaks to the experiences of the Black queer community is archival in nature, as their stories have long been the targets of cultural erasure. His work acts as a love letter to all of the people whose feelings and experiences go unheard, and each one of his stitches is done with the same love that a mother would use to mend her child’s clothing.
Willa Flink ’25 (she/her they/them) is a History major with minors in Arts Administration and Honors Forum from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She feels at home in museum work. At the Tang Museum, she interns in collections as a Registrarial Intern and with stop motion film Artist in Residence Lauren Kelley. She also assistant curated the U.S./Mexico border-centered exhibit, “Painting the Border: A Child’s Voice” which launched at UConn’s Dodd Center for Human Rights. As a multi-media creator, Willa is passionate about telling stories sustainably using found objects. She loves reusing the dirty caulking puddy peeled from her windows at home to sculpt memories of her late Grandpa’s Cajun cooking in miniature. Willa wants to use cross-disciplinary artmaking to further explore the concepts of collective memory and collective amnesia as they relate to equity in the Minneapolis Public School system.
Emma Gill ’24 (she/her) is a Political Science major and Media and Film Studies Minor from Berlin, Germany. She is fascinated by the stories that others share and is committed to working together with people to express their narratives in an intriguing way through the audio format. Her favorite projects to date have been interviewing and creating a podcast together with children of Holocaust survivors and discussing their concept of identity, as well as working in collaboration with the International Association of Women in Radio and Television to create an oral history archive. Emma is currently working together with Saratoga Black Lives Matter leaders on a podcast documentary.
Kevin Langyintuo ‘24 (He/Him) is a Philosophy major and Media and Film Studies minor. He was born in Indiana but was predominantly raised in Kenya. He has been interested in storytelling for a very long time, as it was a way for him to experience lives outside his own. Kevin primarily tells stories through poetry, block prints, and short documentaries. Kevin is mainly interested in elevating the seemingly mundane in aesthetically unique ways.
Issy Beatriz Mejia ‘23 (they/them) is a first-generation college student from the Dominican Republic. They are a Social Work major with a minor in Black Studies. Issy’s creative pieces, academic work, as well as their professional & personal life often center and/or are influenced by their identities and experiences as a Black, Queer, gender-nonconforming femme who proudly wears their natural hair. During Fall 2022, Issy planned and hosted the inaugural Natural Hair Fest (NHF) at Skidmore. The NHF provided students with access to free hair products, an opportunity to support Black businesses, enjoy performances & art and so much more! There were even free haircuts from Tru Cutz, a local barbershop that is knowledgeable in cutting textured and natural hair. This event brought representation of natural hair and opened up a safe and affirming place for people with natural hair to celebrate themselves and the Black community around them. Issy is excited to create pieces that continue to celebrate natural hair.
Anesu Mukombiwa ‘24 (she/her) is an international student majoring in English from Harare, Zimbabwe. Her passion for storytelling has mainly been explored through non-fiction writing and documentary videography, which she had the privilege to engage with through a combination of her English classes and her position with the MDOCS DOCLab at Skidmore. Her work is about home—it searches for home, it recreates and re-envisions home, it goes home. She is drawn to documentary/nonfiction work for the possibility of telling the unheard stories about communities and issues that have been historically kept from the screen. Like home.
Luna Peralta ‘23 (She/her) is an Environmental Science major from Bronx, NY. During her undergraduate career, Luna has worked as an MDOCS lab assistant where she participated in the Co-Creation Initiative. Through that experience, she has captured important stories and practiced various mediums such as film, photography, and audio. Storytelling holds a special place in Luna’s heart since it can give a voice to those in need. Having created a handful of documentary projects, she has made sure to center the importance of self-expression and family dynamics. As her career at Skidmore comes to an end, she hopes to continue her passion for documentary and storytelling as an aspiring filmmaker.
Student /Faculty Collaborative Research Fellows- Lucia Hulsether and Apollo Ibn-Hasan
Lucia Hulsether (She/her) is a scholar of religion, culture, and politics in the Americas and an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College. Her core areas of study and teaching include capitalism and labor, histories of social movements, feminist theory, popular culture and media, and other topics in contemporary cultural critique. Her first book, Capitalist Humanitarianism, was published with Duke University Press in February 2023. While at the Storytellers’ Institute, Lucia will work alongside student collaborator Apollo ibn-Hasan to develop systems, programming, and partnerships for Nothing Never Happens: A Radical Pedagogy Podcast, which Lucia co-hosts with her colleague Tina Pippin (Agnes Scott College). Lucia and Apollo are especially excited about our collaborations with organizers from, respectively, Harm Reduction Works and the abolitionist political education collective Study and Struggle.
Apollo ibn-Hasan (He/him) ‘25 is a religious studies major from Philadelphia! Apollo’s main passions are simply liberation and good food. Being very interested in using his spot “in the ivory tower” that is Skidmore (or any other place of “higher education”) to further learn ways to politically organize and coalesce, Apollo finds storytelling to be a very powerful tool for said organizing. This summer Apollo will be working on the Nothing Never Happens podcast and collaborations with organizers from Harm Reduction Works and Study & Struggle with Lucia Hulsether.
