Alicia Echavarria is a doctoral student at Northwestern University from Harlem, New York. As a filmmaker and theorist, she seeks to explore notions of race, generational trauma and proprietorship through possession tropes in U.S. and Dominican cinema. Her intersectional approach to the possession genre highlights how such tropes can problematize hegemonic narratives of national identity and Blackness. She earned her BA in English with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in Cinema Studies from Bowdoin College. As a first-generation college student and Afrolatina, she aims to serve and uplift her community through film and scholarship.