I Am See-Through: Participatory Video Making As A Method For Social Change In The Mississippi Delta

This thesis traces my application of critical participatory video scholarship to the development of a teen video documentary course that I facilitated during my graduate school tenure at the Tutwiler Community Education Center in the Mississippi Delta. Since at least the 1960s, documentarians have utilized participatory video methodologies as a way to tackle social issues through a ground-up approach in which community members play a vital role in the production of documentary projects. The development and application of participatory video varies greatly across disciplines including radical documentary filmmaking, visual studies, developmental studies, and emerging social media studies. Over the years, a number of programs have adopted participatory video to work with young people living in marginalized communities, to provoke youth civic engagement and to provide a platform for young people to express themselves. Recent scholarship calls into question the celebratory tone of many youth participatory video projects and examines the viability of the participatory video approach in participatory action research. This criticism considers the complexities of self-representation in visual work made by young people in an adult facilitator led environment and the usefulness of participatory video frameworks in addressing a young person's needs. With this in mind, I explore the limitations of participatory video and also its potential as a tool for social change in the Mississippi Delta.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A. in Southern Studies

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Southern Studies

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Prather, Paige

Contributors dc:contributor

• Jodi Skipper
• Andy Harper
• Ted Ownby

• Activist Scholarship
• Documentary
• Mississippi Delta
• Participatory Research
• Participatory Video
• Youth
• Social and Cultural Anthropology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/865

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:egrove.olemiss.edu:etd-1864