Hello friends, my name is Aasha and I’m fundraising to support my friend Kyera’s move to California to start grad school this fall. After six years working in state and local politics, she took some time to reflect on her experiences and how they might align with her lifelong interest in the arts.

Kyera ultimately decided to apply to PhD programs in film. She will be joining Stanford University’s Art & Art History department as a Film & Media PhD student this coming fall!!!!

The goal of this campaign is to ease this transition by covering the costs associated with her move/starting grad school, including cross-country moving services, a new laptop, and a flight to California. If enough people support even with a few dollars we can hit this goal quickly (which is necessary because moving and flight prices are going up every day!!) Anything raised over this amount will support Kyera on her multi-year road to becoming Dr. Sterling.

Kyera is a kind, supportive, and loving friend, and if you made it this far in the description odds are she’s supported you in some way as a friend, made you think with her incisive film critique, impressed you with her ~flair~ for fashion, worked with you at the state house/rebel/elsewhere, and/or served you one (or many) glasses of wine. All of which are reasons in and of themselves to support this campaign.

Finally, here are a few words from Kyera about what she hopes to study and explore while at Stanford:

I’ve long been interested in what constitutes blackness: what is black soul and being? How do those ineffable aspects inform black aesthetic? The history of black political movements have always been inextricable from black arts movements, and as a former politico I’m interested in the connections between radical politics and aesthetic traditions. I’m especially interested in how these connections and traditions have manifested in black film history. I’m continually shocked and propelled by how little access black folks have to black film; whether that’s film long-since made but buried in archives and vaults or future productions that feel out-of-reach for under resourced creators.

I hope to use this PhD to not only think broadly about black visual tradition inside academia, but to break down those walls in ways that contribute to more bold, widely available public exhibitions, festivals and programming which allows us to see and experience blackness in all its historic and contemporary complexity. I’ve previously taught public courses on black horror and black abstraction and have been featured on public media to discuss the nuances of African American Film Noir. I hope to continue complicating blackness and its dimensions in ways that nourish black folks while providing visions of (and ammunition for) socio-political change.