Baker Artist Portfolios

Dr. Kalima Young is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Media and Film at Towson University. Her research explores the impact of race and gender-based trauma on Black identity, media, and cultural production. Her recent work includes The Periscopic Gaze (2024), a documentary exploring Black women’s ancestral survival strategies, and Damn Y’all Fine (2025), a journey into Black queer aesthetics in Baltimore. She is a 2022 Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund Fellow and a 2023 Docs in Progress Legacy Fellow. Additionally, Dr. Young provides bi-weekly media and cultural criticism for Silver Screen Radio, a program on WTMD 89.7 in Towson. Her manuscript, Mediated Misogynoir: The Erasure of Black Women’s and Girls’ Innocence in the Public Imagination, was released by Rowman and Littlefield’s Lexington Books in 2022. Dr. Young has an extensive history of multi-disciplinary artistic practices in Baltimore. Activities have included operating a LGBTQ youth Theater Troop, serving as a member of the Leadership Team for Force: Upsetting Rape Culture’s Monument Quilt, and being a member of The Rooted Collective, a Black queer healing collective that provides ongoing healing opportunities and events in Baltimore.