Rachel Raimist

raimist

Rachel Raimist

430C Phifer Hall | 205-348-8656 | email hidden; JavaScript is required

Rachel Raimist is a filmmaker who most enjoys documentary storytelling, but has also worked extensively in narrative fiction filmmaking, music videos, and live event videography.  Her primary research interests are in the study of women in film, feminist filmmaking, hip-hop feminisms, and digital storytelling.  Raimist’s award-winning films have screened at festivals such as South By Southwest, Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, San Jose Cinequest and Women in the Director’s Chair, and on international television outlets.  She is one of the founding curators of B-Girl Be: A Celebration of Women in Hip-Hop at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, MN. Currently, she is working on two social justice documentary projects that work in resistance to the school-to-prison pipeline.

In 2009, the Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Department (GWSS) at the University of Minnesota honored Raimist by dedicating the Rachel Raimist Feminist Media Center in her honor.

In addition to her faculty appointment, she is the head of A/V at the Tuscaloosa Amphitheater, a 7500 seat facility that opened in 2011 with sold-out shows including Jill Scott & Anthony Hamilton, Kenny Chesney, Miranda Lambert, Widespread Panic, Garrison Keillor, Patti Labelle, The O’Jays, The Avett Brothers, and more!

If you’d like to see her and her students in action, take a look at the TCF Amphitheater Internship Promo video:

Raimist is currently an Assistant Director at UA’s Creative Campus, a student-led arts advocacy center on campus whose mission is to turn ideas into action.

Research Interests

  • feminist documentary filmmaking
  • digital Storytelling pedagogy, media writing practices, and articulations of identity
  • feminist media praxis
  • documentary storytelling

Specialty Fields

  • film/video production
  • videography/cinematography
  • documentary filmmaking
  • digital storytelling
  • hip-hop feminisms

Teaching

  • TCF 201: Introduction to Video Production
  • TCF 312: Advanced Videography
  • TCF 155: Freshman Seminar – Personal Screens: Media and Identity in the Age of YOUtube, ME Media & MYspace
  • TCF 397: Production Crew Credits
  • TCF 387: Media Production Internship
  • TCF 444: Special Topics – Producing & Directing Music Videos
Here are clips of this class in action:

Behind the Scenes Documentary: Gifted’s “Superstar” Music Video from UA, Telecommunication and Film on Vimeo.

TCF Behind the Scenes Gifted’s “Superstar” Music Video from UA, Telecommunication and Film on Vimeo.

  • TCF 444: Professional Development for Media Production Majors
  • TCF 444: Documenting Honors College “Art to Life”
  • TCF 444: Special Topics – Media in the Digital Age
  • TCF 444: Special Topics – We Media: Digital Stories of Race, Class and Gender
  • TCF 444/544: Special Topics – We Media: Digital Storytelling
  • TCF 490: Capstone Production Projects I
  • WS 510 / AAST 495: Cross-listed section of We Media: Digital Storytelling
  • TCF 553: Topics in Telecomm
  • WS 535: Black Feminism

Publications

Books

  • Raimist, Rachel and Pough, G., Richardson, E., Durham, A. (Eds.) Home Girls Make Some Noise: A Hip Hop Feminism Reader. Los Angeles, CA: Parker Publishing. 2007.

Book Chapters

  • Raimist, Rachel. “Break Beats and Broken Hearts” in Fresh, Bold and So Def: Women in Hip-Hop Changing the Game. H2A Womanhood Learning Project, (Forthcoming).

Multimedia Projects

Photography

  • Raimist, Rachel. Cover Image and various photographs in Check It While I Wreck It: Black Women Rappers and the Public Sphere. Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press, 2004.
  • Raimist, Rachel. Various Photographs. In Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop, Jeff Chang (Ed.). New York: Basic Civatas, 2006, 307 – 319.

Other Select Publications

Select Video Work

  • The Wedding Album (Digital Video, 6 minutes, 2010)

  • The Stillwater Poetry Group (SPG) – Work in progress, projected 2010 completion

  • Central Touring Theater (CTT) – Work in Progress, projected 2012 completion
  • The Path to Power: I Self Devine’s “Sounds of Low Class Amerika” (Digital Video, DVD to be released with album, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2010)

  • The Pedagogy of Digital Storytelling in the College Classroom
    (Digital Video, 12 minutes, 2009)

  • A B-Girl Is…
    (Digital Video, 60 min loop, 2005)

This video was produced for the first B-Girl Be: A Celebration of Women in Hip-Hop (2005) at Intermedia Arts, Minneapolis, MN.

  • Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme
    (Digital Video, Director: Kevin Fitzgerald, 75 min, 2005)

Other Endeavors

  • Academic Journals
    “An Interview with the Director Rachel Raimist”, The Velvet Light Trap, Number 53, Spring 2004, 59-65.
  • Scholarly Book Chapters
  • Basu, Dippanita and Harris, L. “Nobody Knows My Name and an Interview with the Director Rachel Raimist”. Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, London: Pluto Press, 2006, 56-70.
  • Watkins, S. Craig. “We Love Hip Hop, But Does Hip Hop Love Us?”. Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Boston: Beacon Press. 2006, 221.
  • Select Popular Press Book Chapters
  • “Put Your Camera Where My Eyes Can See: Hip-Hop Video, Film, and Documentary – A Roundtable Curated by Eric K. Arnold, with Rachel Raimist, Kevin Epps, and Michael Wanguhu”. Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop, Jeff Chang (Ed.). New York: Basic Civatas, 2006, 306-320.

Select Media Interviews

  • Select Radio Interviews
    KPFA, “Hard Knock Radio” Interview with Dr. Jelani Cobb, by Davey D. May 2, 2010.
  • Minnesota Public Radio, “The Current” Interview by Mary Lucia, 20 July 2007.
  • Radio MNartists: Rachel Raimist, Interview by Marya Morstad, 12 June 2007.