Martabel Wasserman is a PhD candidate in Art and Art History with a minor in the Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity. She received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine with a certificate in the Graduate Feminist Emphasis. Engaging primarily with place-based research, her research thinks with and through specific ecosystems in order to imagine materially rooted alternative futures. She is currently the Thomas H. Dee II Dissertation Fellow at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford.

Her dissertation “Capturing the Rock: Alcatraz and the (Un)Making of the Carceral Landscape” explores the historical conjuncture between notions of landscape and imprisonment in the United States through the site of Alcatraz. 

Statement: “Drawing extensively on feedback I received during the Visualizing Abolition Workshop, I produced an article under review at significant peer reviewed publication. I have been engaged in many on-going conversations that were initiated at the workshop. It was a profound and generative experience!”