Dissertation Scholars

Mariah Webber (she/they) is a Southern born artist-scholar and doctoral candidate whose research focuses on the socio-historical construction of the Black deviant body across aesthetics, cultural production, and more specifically, exotic dance. She holds a master's degree in Sociology from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2017) and a bachelor's degree in psychology from Appalachian State University (2015). Currently, Mariah is in the Feminist Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara where her dissertation Capturing Intimacies: Collaged Explorations of Black Queer Sexuality in Strip Club Culture mobilizes auto-ethnography, collage, and Black queer feminisms to explore the intersections between cultural production, survival, artistry, community, sexuality, and spirituality, within Black Southern strip clubs. The project uncovers the lived experiences of Black women exotic dancers as they prepare for, perform in, and navigate the socioeconomic landscape of exotic dance & performance. This research has been supported by the Eugene Cota-Robles fellowship and the Institute for Citizens & Scholars and is currently supported by the Department of Black Studies Dissertation Fellowship. 

As a multimedia artist, fashion enthusiast, and writer, Mariah's work can be found across formats. She has designed cover art for several literary publications including Sistories: A Literary Magazine, Sankofa Shadow Work: Diaries of a Diasporic Diviner by Sara Markeba Daise, and Bringing Wreck by Omise'eke Tinsley. Her academic writing has appeared in Routledge's Sex Work and Language and Educational Action. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Sistories: A Literary Magazine and becoming undisciplined: a zine. Currently, Mariah is completing her dissertation as a Dissertation Fellow in the UCSB Department of Black Studies and is a lecturer in the Department of Africana Studies at California State University, Dominguez-Hills. 

Taking up the culture-specific positionality of Black queer Southern scholars before her, Mariah's work hinges on community building and political praxis beyond the academy — from the US South to South Central, Los Angeles. She has help contracted positions with The Sex Worker's Giving Circle, Sex Worker's Outreach Program Los Angeles, North Carolina Black Leadership  & Organizing Collective, Sistories: A Literary magazine, and Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause as an educator, mutual aid & grant distributor, graphic designer, and curator. During her free time, she enjoys pole dancing, making mood boards, & playlists, reading Black fiction, cooking meals for loved ones, & watching her stories.

I am a Black Colombian woman, descended from uprooted parents who relocated from a Pacific town (Chocó) to eastern Cali, Colombia, where I was born and raised my Black son as a single mother and head of the household. I hold a bachelors degree in art education and a masters in journalism from Universidad ICESI in Colombia, and I am currently a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of California, Riverside.

My professional experience is primarily focused on education and social activism
through collectives, social organizations, and educational institutions in Colombia. As a Black woman from eastern Cali—a city whose economic growth has been built upon the exploitation of racialized, displaced, uprooted, and silenced people. In this sense, "I also am" what Hartman terms the "afterlife of slavery." I am deeply committed to the social and racial realities of my country and its specific contexts.

I have been an active member of the Casa Cultural El Chontaduro Association in Cali, Colombia, by contributing to the general investigative processes and participating in its research line program. My research interests center on analyzing the historical role of Black women in shaping Colombian society and the African diaspora from a situated perspective, particularly regarding the place of servitude as a continuation of the slavery system and its logic. Recognizing my connection to these historical realities drives my activism in both social and
academic arenas.