Mary Michael is a Master’s student in Cinema and Media Studies at USC. She researches how interactive media produces new understandings and practices of community and citizenship, primarily through innovative and experimental design of medium interactivity and aesthetics. Her work includes the use of new and digital media to produce media literacies and artifacts that allow communities to re-imagine and strategize their collective agency. Additional interests include video game studies, information visualization, speculative architecture, and theory/practice methodologies. Her current project involves the design of an interactive medium that would allow for constructions and communications of queerness in Arab and Arab-American communities that are localized to those communities’ cultures, and not overwritten or colonized by Western or American understandings of queerness. (This project is informed by her own identity and experiences, as well as her access to affected communities.) After she earns her M.A., she plans to pursue a career in the interactive media industry as either a game designer or web developer. She plans to work specifically with small or independent interactive media organizations that focus heavily on community outreach and service.

Projects