Dr. M. Catherine Jonet (she & they)

Scholar, Filmmaker, Curator, and Digital Media Creator

Founding Co-Director, Feminist Border Arts

Associate Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies and English
New Mexico State University

Dr. M. Catherine Jonet (she & they) is an Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies (G&SS) and English at New Mexico State University (NMSU) and Founding Co-Director of Feminist Border Arts (FBA, fbarts.org), a research-creation platform merging art, activism, and interdisciplinary scholarship. With a Ph.D. in English (Critical Theory and Cultural Studies) and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Purdue University, their work in film/video, design, curation, and academic scholarship interrogates aesthetics, desire, and public culture through queer and feminist frameworks, positioning these perspectives as embodied archives of resistance and reimagining.

Leadership & Curation in Feminist Border Arts

For over ten years, she has led the creation and expansion of FBA from the ground up, shaping it into a rigorously curated forum where innovative film and media serve as both expressive art forms and research mediums, fostering critical dialogue and advancing scholarly inquiry into feminist, queer, transformative, and transnational perspectives. This includes founding and directing the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival (FBAFF), co-organizing the Feminist Border Arts Zine Festival (FBAZF), and curating the FBA: Critical Craftwork site (fba.nmsu.edu), which showcases original projects in digital storytelling, zine-making, design media, and community-centered creative praxis.

Filmmaking & Media Aesthetics

Dr. Jonet’s filmmaking practice culminates in works like Limbus (2024), a cyborg manifest-0 that reimagines gender, ecology, and technology through “vegetal witch glitch.” This vertical video essay ruptures binaries between organic and synthetic, human and non-human, drawing on Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory to frame digital disruptions as sites of liberation.

Selected Screenings & Awards for Limbus:

• Best Vertical Video – F3: Queen City Film Festival (Cincinnati, USA – February 13, 2024)

• Best Vertical Video – Ice CineFest (Cincinnati, USA – January 27, 2025)

• Best Vertical Video Finalist – Theta Short Film Festival (Naples, Italy – December 5, 2024)

• Official Selection - Social World Film Festival (Vico Equense, Italy – June 30, 2024)

• Official Selection - Tijuana Vertical Film Festival (Tijuana, Mexico – August 28, 2024)

• Official Selection - MINA (Melbourne, Australia – November 8, 2024)

• Official Selection - Diminuto International Minimal Film Festival (Mexico City, Mexico – December 5, 2024)

• Official Selection - Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival (Chennai, India – February 21, 2025)

• Official Selection - Dhaka International Mobile Film Festival (Dhaka, Bangladesh – February 22, 2025)

• Official Selection - Short Shot Fest (Moscow, Russia – April 11, 2025)

Digital Design Advocacy & Public Scholarship

They also bring their work in digital design and media aesthetics to social media advocacy and storytelling, serving as the creative force behind the @GENXPROF social media platforms on Instagram and TikTok. Additionally, they design and promote digital campaigns, promotional materials, and audio-visual content for FBA and G&SS, amplifying feminist, queer, and interdisciplinary scholarship and aesthetics through media and public engagement strategies.

Academic Contributions

Dr. Jonet serves on the editorial board of Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture and has co-authored on film festival curation as public scholarship (MLA Profession) and queering digital pedagogies (Designing Intersectional Online Education, Routledge). Their humanties publications explore topics like queer adolescence in film (e.g., Céline Sciamma’s Naissance des pieuvres), feminist aesthetics, and queer temporalities.