On May 27th, 2025, NASA member, Manar Ellethy, succesfully defended her PhD dissertation at Leiden University. Ellethy’s dissertation titled Paying the Dues: Black Documentary Film and the Quest for Truth, examines Black engagement with documentary film in the 1960s in the context of the Black radical tradition and cultural resistance. Her dissertation brings to light a wave of Black engagement with the medium of documentary film in what can only be described as a Black documentary renaissance that swept through the 1960s. Most importantly, the film case studies making up Ellethy’s thesis encapsulate how this engagement constituted a quest for truth, seeking to reveal truth-narratives about pressing issues that confronted Black communities across the nation, bringing to the forefront discussions about Black identity, visuality, diversity, solidarity, gender, and imagination.

Manar started her PhD trajectory in 2020 at Leiden University and the Roosevelt institute for American Studies as part of the project Racial Democracy under the supervision of Prof. dr. Damian Alan Pargas.  She is currently a Lecturer of Cultural History at the Utrecht University. Her work continues to focus on race and cultural studies with a specific focus on Black radicalism and cultural resistance in the US during the 1960s; and also, Black transnational solidarities with decolonial and anti-imperial struggles in North Africa and the broader MENA region.