Participation Type
Performance
Presentation #1 Title
Working Kinship
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Like any drug, opioids are first felt in the user’s body, but the effects of opioids do not stop at the barrier of the skin. Families, communities, and institutions across the United States are dealing with the impact of opioids and substance use disorder. In Appalachia, one of the epicenters of the epidemic, opioids have become a fact of everyday life--actively shaping people’s material conditions and possibilities for the future.
Our short documentary, Working Kinship, amplifies the experiences of those--grandparents, aunts and uncles, and children--caught up in this epidemic. By focusing on the ripple effects of addiction throughout one family, Working Kinship examines how worlds fall apart and come together again in new and expected ways as a consequence of substance use disorder.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Tijah Bumgarner is a filmmaker and professor. She teaches video production at Marshall University. Bumgarner holds a BFA in film/video from the California Institute of the Arts and an MA in Media Studies from West Virginia State University. As a doctoral candidate at Ohio University, her dissertation explores how extraction in Appalachia is narrativized. In both scholarship and practice, Bumgarner seeks to disrupt stereotypes that conform to a single defining narrative of the region.
Working Kinship
Like any drug, opioids are first felt in the user’s body, but the effects of opioids do not stop at the barrier of the skin. Families, communities, and institutions across the United States are dealing with the impact of opioids and substance use disorder. In Appalachia, one of the epicenters of the epidemic, opioids have become a fact of everyday life--actively shaping people’s material conditions and possibilities for the future.
Our short documentary, Working Kinship, amplifies the experiences of those--grandparents, aunts and uncles, and children--caught up in this epidemic. By focusing on the ripple effects of addiction throughout one family, Working Kinship examines how worlds fall apart and come together again in new and expected ways as a consequence of substance use disorder.
