Professor Elizabeth (Liz) Miller, MFA

Education

MFA, Electronic Arts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
BA, Social Thought & Political Economy, University of Massachusetts

Research interests

Environmental media, feminist media, place-based media, participatory media, augmented reality, virtual reality, interactive documentary, video advocacy, community media, documentary media, youth media, climate change, waste, water privatization, migration, refugees rights, refugee youth, Latin American film and media.

Courses

Coms 455 – Food, Media & Culture
Coms 506 – In the Field
Coms 384 Moving Images II
Coms 569 Moving Images, Diploma

Research projects

As the Gull Flies (2023)
As the Gull Flies  is an immersive educational film/installation that explores the relationships between ring-billed gulls, Montreal residents, urban toxicologists, and waste experts and the tensions that arise from the presence of a wild animal that has adapted to thrive off of human discards. The film was at the Montreal Biosphere from April 2023 - June 2024.

WasteScapes (2021)
Wastescapes is an augmented documentary and walking or bike tour. With environmental justice as a key critical lens, we explore the scales of waste from individual to institutional, from local to global to grapple with the complex and inevitable place of waste in our lives.

SwampScapes (2018)
A VR and mulit-platform exploration of Florida's most endangered ecosystem, the Everglades. Awards: First place VR at Tacoma International Festival, Finalist for "Excellence in Immersive Storytelling," Online Journalism Awards. Project Review

The Shore Line (2017)
An interactive documentary exploring the tensions of rising sea levels and unchecked development in coastal towns and cities around the world (43 videos, interactive maps and more). Award: Finalist, Digital Media Category, Yorkton Film Festival.

Going Public: The Art of Participatory Practice(2017)
The book is available through UCB Press
Going Public responds to the urgent need to expand current thinking on what it means to co-create and to actively involve the public in research activities. Drawing on conversations with over thirty practitioners across multiple cultures and disciplines, this book examines the ways in which oral historians, media producers, and theatre artists use art, stories, and participatory practices to engage creatively with their publics. The book offers insights into concerns related to voice, appropriation, privilege, and the ethics of participation.

En la casa, la cama y la calle, (At home, in bed and in the streets) 2014   This 35-minute documentary follows an inspiring Nicaraguan women’s rights group, Puntos de Encuentro, as it works to end sexual violence at home, in bed and in the streets through a powerful blend of mainstream media and grassroots organizing. The film has won awards and screened in over fifty venues and festivals. To learn more about Puntos visit: www.puntos.org.ni 

Hands-on: women, climate, change 2014
The film profiles five women from four continents tacking climate change through policy, protest, education and innovation. Project developed with directors from Kenya, India, Norway and Canada, all IAWRT (International Association of Women in Radio and Film) members.

Additional projects

All I Remember, 2013
This documentary follows Leontine, a young survivor of the Rwandan genocide, as she takes her story public for the first time.

Mapping Memories, 2009-2013
Mapping Memories is a participatory media project involving DIY cartography and refugee youth in coordination with the various partners including the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Cote de Neige Youth Center, the YWCA which uses personal stories and a range of media tools (DIY cartography, video, sound walks, mapping, photography) to better understand the experiences of youth with refugee experience in Montreal. Our objective has been to produce creative work that will have an impact on policy, education, art and on the lives of the youth involved. We have produced a book in English and French, both of which are available for download as well as over twenty films and documentaries.
To launch the book, we organized a tour of 30 participating schools and universities.

The Water Front, 2007
A documentary film project that brings the controversial issue of water privatization to the larger public. The film has been screened around the world, won seven awards and been broadcast in Spain and the United States. The project involves a viewing and curriculum guide, a screening guide, an interactive website (powered by Drupal), an on-line streaming media channel with 8 short videos, a 20-minute educational version, a feature length documentary for festivals and broadcast, and a DVD with educational materials. In coordination with a national environmental organization, Food and Water Watch, the film toured around the Great Lakes from September 2008 to March 2009, and visited 30 cities. To build participation amongst youth, we launched an on-line audio remix competition of the theme song of the film, which was written by legendary blues singer, Joe L. Carter.

Novela, Novela, 2002
A 30-minute documentary about a group of Nicaraguan feminists who have fused human rights with popular culture to create Nicaragua’s most popular tele-novela (soap opera). Novela,Novela examines how this ground-breaking series made it to broadcast, and how the creators, writers, actors and viewers grappled with controversial themes like domestic violence and homophobia. The project has won five awards including: Women’s Rights Award, Media That Matters Festival, 2004, Honorary Mention, International Association of Women in Radio and TV, 2004, Latin American Studies Association Award of Merit in Film, 2004,Freedom Award, Outfest,Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, 2003

Memories Under Construction, 2000
A nation wide project of the National Endowment for the Arts and Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation — Artists and Communities: America Creates for the Millennium. I produced nine short video portraits, Parkville Portraits that were screened before feature films in the Real Art Ways Cinema. Portraits were also projected on buildings throughout the community and featured on a website. The project was featured on NPR. Moles, 1999 A personal web narrative using body moles as a navigational device. This early web documentary won three awards:
First Place, THAW 00, Fifth Annual Festival of Video, Film, and Digital Media of the Institute for Cinema and Culture, 2000, Co-winner of Art and Science, Collaboration, Inc. Digital 99 Competition, 2nd Place, McKinney Writing contest

Just Here, 1999
Four youth, ages 14-17 from the Taylor Housing Projects were hired to produce a personal story about living in a housing project. Their stories were cut into a 23-minute documentary. The project was broadcast on Free Speech TV and won the Golden Apple Award, (National Educational Media Network, 1999).

Book

Miller, Elizabeth, Edward Little and Steven High. Going Public: The Art of Participatory Practice.

Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017.

Chapters

Miller, Elizabeth (Liz), (2023) “My Two Families”: Experiences of Refugee Youth Children, Youth and War, Edited Kristine Alexander, Andrew Burtch and Barbara Lorenzkowski, McGill-Queen’s University Press

Miller, Liz and Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz, (2023) “Interrogating Power and Unsettling Place in Documentary VR”

in Constructions of the Real: Intersections of Practice and Theory in Documentary-Based Filmmaking, Ed,

Kim Munro, Catherine Gough-Brady, Christine Rogers.

Miller, Liz and Rachel Webb Jekanowski, "Collaborative Encounters: I-docs and environmental pedagogy in

and beyond the classroom" in The Interactive Documentary in Canada, edited by Mike Maker, (forthcoming

McGill-Queen’s).

Miller, L and Michele Luchs, (2015) “On Tour with Mapping Memories: Sharing Refugee Youth Stories in

Montreal Classrooms.” Beyond Testimony and Trauma: Oral History in the Aftermath of Mass Violence,

University of British Columbia Press, p. 235-253

Lee, E. and Miller, L. (2014). “Entry Point: Participatory Media-Making with Queer and Trans Refugees:

Social Locations, Agendas and Thinking Structurally” in Community-Based Multiliteracies & Digital Media

Projects: Questioning Assumptions and Exploring Realities, Heather M. Pleasants and Dana E. Salter, eds.

NY: Peter Lang, p. 45-64.

Miller, L and Waugh, T. (2014) “The Process of Place: Grassroots Documentary Screenings,” in Screening

Truth to Power: A Reader on Documentary Activism Svetla Turnin and Ezra Winton, eds. Montreal: Cinema

Politica, p. 35-45.

Miller, L. (2013). “Going Places: Helping Youth with Refugee Experiences Take Their Stories Public.” Oral

History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice, Anna Sheftel, Stacey Zembrzycki, eds. NY:

Palgrave Macmillan, p. 113 -127.

Miller L. and Michele Luchs (2013). “Arrival Stories: Using Media to Create Connections in a Refugee

Residence”. Remembering Mass Violence: Oral History, New Media and Performance, Steven High, Edward

Little and Thi Ry Duong (eds.), Toronto, University of Toronto Press, p. 184-200.

Miller, L. & Michele Smith (2012) “Dissemination and Ownership of Knowledge” in Handbook of

Participatory Video AltaMira Press, August, p. 331-348

Miller, L. (2009) Filmmaker in Residence: The Digital Grandchild of Challenge for Change. In Waugh, T.

(Ed). Challenge for Change / Societe Nouvelle, McGill University Press, p. 427-442.

Articles

Miller, Liz (2022), “WasteScapes: Using Locative to Augment Waste Pedagogies in Place,” Editor Eszter

Zimanyi, Spectator: The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television Criticism. 42.2

(Spring 2022): 45-53

Miller, L (2020), Bazaz, Aggie Ebrahimi “An Emerging Rhetoric for Critical Reflexivity in Co-Creative

Documentary VR,” Ed: Maria Zalewska, Spectator: The University of Southern California Jounal of Film and

Television Criticism. 40:2 (Fall 2020): 21 -30.

Miller, L (2019), Grinfeder K., Karge E., Bemis G., “SwampScapes: A Creative Practice of Commoning in

Florida’s Swamps “Becoming Environmental: Media, Logistics and Ecological Change, Synoptique, 8.1, p.

95 – 103.https://synoptique.ca/8-1-becoming-environmental-media-logistics-and-ecological-change/#more-781

Miller, E. (2018) “The Shore Line as Polyphany in Practice: A Case Study” Alpahville, Journal of Film and

Screen Media, Issue 15, Summer, 2018, p. 113-123.

Miller, E. (2017) The Shore Line and the Practice of Slow Resilience (Frames Cinema Journal),

Issue 12, December.

Miller, L (2018) The Shore Line: An Interactive Documentary for a Sustainable Future. Rough Draft: Media

Story and Society, Vol. 2, No. 5 New Media for a Sustainable Future.

Miller, L. and Marty Allor, (2016) “Choreographies of Collaboration: Social Engagement in Interactive

Documentaries”, Studies in Documentary Film. Mar 2016, Vol. 10 Issue 1, p53-70.

Luchs, Michele & Elizabeth Miller (2015) “Not so far away: a collaborative model of engaging refugee youth

in the outreach of their digital stories.” Area. 48. 10.1111/area.12165

Miller, L. (2009) “Building Participation in the Outreach for “The Water Front” film,” Journal of Canadian

Studies, special edition, Sharing Authority: Community-University Collaboration in Oral History, Digital

Storytelling, and Engaged Scholarship, Vol. 43, No. 1, Winter, p. 59-86.

Miller, L. (2010) “Queer is In the Eye of the Newcomer: Mapping Performances of Place” InTensions, Issue

4.0 Fall, p. 2 - 24.