Lauren M. Cramer

Lauren M. Cramer is an Assistant Professor in the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, affiliated with Innis College. Her work focuses on the aesthetics of Blackness, hip-hop visual culture, and spatial practices, with a particular emphasis on digital visual culture. She is a founding member of the liquid blackness research collective and co-editor of the liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies (Duke University Press). Her current book project explores hip-hop visual culture and Black spatial practices.

Dr. Cramer’s research has been published in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Black Camera, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She has co-edited special journal issues including “Close-Up: Contemporary Black Horror” (2023) and “ Modes of Black Liquidity: Music Video as Black Art” (2020). Her writing critically examines topics such as racial representation in cinema, anti-Black violence, and the intersections of art and Black studies.

Awards include the 2020 Connaught New Researcher Award. She holds a PhD from Georgia State University, an MA from Emory University, and a BA from Villanova University. Her interdisciplinary approach bridges film studies, cultural theory, and visual arts, with a focus on Black creative practices and their socio-political dimensions.