She uses the arts to open doors and make connections

In honor of Women’s History Month, The Well introduces readers to women working at Carolina who are leaving their Heel print on the University and beyond. Look for a new Women Making History feature each Thursday this month. Find previous stories here.

Why her work matters

Graham is associate director of engagement for Carolina Performing Arts, and she co-directs the Carolina Center for Public Service’s Arts in Public Service Fellowship, a program that encourages students to enrich their communities and work toward social change through the arts. She also teaches and publishes scholarly work.

Broadly speaking, Graham views the arts through a public service lens. “If you are giving back to your community and involved in the community as an artist, as an arts worker, that is a way of providing a service for your community,” she says.

Graham puts the arts to work in many creative and impactful ways. During her four years at Carolina, she has forged sustainable curricular and programmatic connections between CPA artists and Carolina departments, centers and libraries. She once brought a visiting theater performer to a class of graduate occupational therapy students to discuss how the actor could more genuinely embody the character of his ill and aging father. She struck up a collaboration between artist Nina Chanel Abney and art students, as well as staff in facilities management and student housing. Together, they designed and painted basketball court murals that represented the student’s thoughts and feelings.

“We are not just a presenting organization,” she says about CPA. “We bring together communities. We instigate conversations.”

What people say about her

“Dr. Graham has been incredibly successful in creating connections across campus, in our community and nationally with the arts, science, social justice, research and more. Her impact has been felt far and wide. One example: She produced the community performance “Affordable Housing: The Musical” in 2019. The musical satire showcased the immense artistic talent of Orange County residents and served as an entry point into a difficult conversation between housing rights activists and politicians. In this case, partnering meant listening to and watching a vision unfold, offering space and production assistance and then stepping aside so that community members could tell their stories.”

— Jana Jackson, director of marketing and communications, Carolina Performing Arts

Who she is

Born in Australia on Elcho Island, where her parents taught English in the predominantly Aboriginal community for 11 years, Graham says, “I was different from the very beginning, but I kind of never knew it.” That feeling led her to study anthropology at Bard College. Her shared passions for social justice, the arts and education have shaped her career since. She has worked as a public art teacher in Brooklyn, a community organizer in Boston and an arts-festival planner in Chicago. She earned a doctorate in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester, where she wrote a dissertation on dance, one of her most enduring loves.

“I think of dance as a social practice,” Graham says. “People think of dance as something that’s ephemeral, as something that disappears. But it’s in our bodies. It doesn’t go away. Dance is also something that is inherently social. It involves other bodies. It involves other people.”