ADAMA Arts Salon Episode 66
Join us for ADAMA's upcoming Arts Salon. Dr Danielle Dickens to moderate a conversation with Ebony Blanding.
About Moderator: Dr. Danielle Dickens is a proud Spelman alumna and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Spelman College. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from Spelman, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Social and Health Psychology from Colorado State University. As a Black feminist social psychologist, her research focuses on the identity development and formation of Black women, particularly how they navigate experiences in the workplace, higher education, and particularly in STEM.
Dr. Dickens teaches courses such as Psychology of Black Women and Psychology of Racism, fostering critical conversations around intersectionality and social justice. She is the co-author of Psychology of Black Womanhood, the first textbook to examine the psychological experiences of Black girls and women in the U.S. She has received several honors, including the 2020 APA Psychology of Black Women Foremothers Mentorship Early Career Award. Her work centers the lived experiences of Black women to identify strategies that reduce health inequities and support career development.
Ebony Blanding: Ebony Blanding is a writer and director with deep Southern roots and a passion for telling stories that sit at the intersection of the mystical and the everyday. Introductions to southern gothic tales and Black folklore from family griots and community elders shaped how she imagines the universe through an Afro-futurist lens — fueling her desire to create cinematic worlds centered on the emotional, spiritual, and adventurous lives of Black women, girls, and children.
She creates across mediums — film, television, branded content, and installation — and moves fluidly between narrative, experimental, and documentary forms. Whether she’s crafting a civil rights period piece or a coming-of-age fantasy, Blanding is drawn to stories where Black imagination leads.
Her work has screened at SXSW, Cape Town International Film Festival, Atlanta Film Society, and streamed at Atlanta International Airport. Her historical short, Georgia Voting Rights, is currently installed at the Georgia State Capitol.
Ebony is the co-founder of the Atlanta-based film collective House of June, a 2021 Blackmagic Collective Future Directors Fellow, and a former Filmmaker-in-Residence with Atlanta Film Society (2017–2019). A preacher’s kid who sees directing as a form of communion, she’s most at home guiding actors into emotional truth and crafting work that makes room for the unseen to rise to the surface.
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ADAMA Arts Salon is a series of conversations featuring contemporary artists, curators, scholars, and more from across the African Diaspora.