Samantha Almeida is a Ph.D. student in the Interdisciplinary Humanities program at U.C Merced, where she specializes in African American Culture and documentary photography. She works under the advisement of Dr. Kevin Dawson. She earned her B.A. in American History from the University of La Verne, where she wrote a cultural history for her thesis on the American dream during the twentieth century. She then earned her M.A in American History at the California State University, Fullerton, where she conducted research on lynching and 1930’s photography during the Scottsboro Case. She is now conducting research on twentieth century photography as it relates to the criminal justice system in connection to African Americans. Her other research interest includes the carceral system throughout Merced and the greater Central Valley through the lens of photography focusing on Brown and Black Americans and undocumented immigrants. She hopes with her combination of research interest she can build a visual project based on the carceral system in the Central Valley as a dissertation. She resides in Merced with her wife Nicole Almeida and dogs Pancho and Blaze.
Positionality Statement
I situate myself within a lineage of voices that have fought against power, oppression, and violence. James Baldwin’s No Name in the Street reminds me that personal histories are always political, that the scars of justice denied live in the body and the land. Like Baldwin, I know the weight of a system designed to silence and condemn, having carried the label of “felon” through spaces that would rather define me by a incident rather than see me in my full complexity. Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider teaches that difference is not something to shrink from, but to wield and celebrate. As a queer mixed woman married to another woman, my love stands in resistance to the narratives that seek to erase or diminish us. Coming from Pomona—a place of sprawling contradictions, where wealth and struggle brush shoulders—I have learned that
belonging is not always given, but forged in truth-telling, and in refusal of perceived social identity. I move through the world knowing that identity is both self-defined and shaped by forces beyond me that continue to hinder me in society. However, my experiences— are still marked by resilience and love by consequence— which are still part of a broader dialogue about justice, liberation, and the right to exist fully. And in that dialogue, I claim my space.
I situate myself within a lineage of voices that have fought against power, oppression, and violence. James Baldwin’s No Name in the Street reminds me that personal histories are always political, that the scars of justice denied live in the body and the land. Like Baldwin, I know the weight of a system designed to silence and condemn, having carried the label of “felon” through spaces that would rather define me by a incident rather than see me in my full complexity. Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider teaches that difference is not something to shrink from, but to wield and celebrate. As a queer mixed woman married to another woman, my love stands in resistance to the narratives that seek to erase or diminish us. Coming from Pomona—a place of sprawling contradictions, where wealth and struggle brush shoulders—I have learned that
belonging is not always given, but forged in truth-telling, and in refusal of perceived social identity. I move through the world knowing that identity is both self-defined and shaped by forces beyond me that continue to hinder me in society. However, my experiences— are still marked by resilience and love by consequence— which are still part of a broader dialogue about justice, liberation, and the right to exist fully. And in that dialogue, I claim my space.