Graduation Year

2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Communication

Major Professor

Frederick Steier, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Aisha S. Durham, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Abraham I. Khan, Ph.D.

Committee Member

S. Elizabeth Bird, Ph.D.

Keywords

documentary film, ethnography, Central Avenue, race, memory, reflexivity

Abstract

This research examines the Civil Rights Movement in Tampa, Florida through documentary film to recognize an imperfect past and visually reconstruct Central Avenue as a physical and Thirdspace site of remembrance located at an intersection of race and community. Motivated by an ethnographic approach and through community engagement, Tampa Technique: Rise, Demise, and Remembrance of Central Avenue is a 54-minute film that explores Central Avenue’s rise to prominence through segregation, its physical and symbolic demise as a racialized site of communal space, and how it is remembered through collective and public memory in the location it once occupied. Documentary film provides an engaging platform to present research in a thoughtful and provocative way to recover lost histories that can inform audiences about structural and systematic inequalities that remain in overt and covert ways. The purpose of this written document supplements the film and takes issues of privilege, reflexivity, and subjectivity into account to interrogate tensions of “self” and “other” encountered during the film’s production and to translate how a visual representation of Central Avenue developed and unfolded as a present form of community participation and intervention through remembrance. The entire documentary is not available online due to copyright restrictions. However, a three-minute documentary trailer is available on Vimeo.

Download

Share

COinS