Janelle Vaughn Dowell is a community engagement specialist and interdisciplinary artist from Chicago, Illinois. Understanding that art has an integral position in the community, Dowell has adopted one of America’s most historic resort communities and is producing a body of work that will reinvigorate and redefine this significant American village. Dowell’s research and body of work will echo W. E. B. Du Bois’s activism and understanding of the need for a multifaceted representation of African American life. This multilayered body of work will utilize the following media for documentation and exhibition purposes: photographic and video interventions, sound recordings and projection.

Dowell is a second year Interdisciplinary Arts & Media MFA student. Prior to attending graduate school, she completed the digital publishing program at Stanford University and received a BA from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. In 2012, she was awarded funding through the Chicago Filmmakers and the Chicago Instructional Technology Foundation to produce a civil rights docu-curriculum.