Where Are They Now: Alfred L. Martin Jr.
As a dancer at Interlochen, Alfred Martin learned to listen to himself and created his own path to academia.
Alred Martin and Heather (Robertson) Dominey (IAA 91-94) at Interlochen Arts Academy during the 1992-1993 school year.
From ballet to marketing and now to academia, Alfred Martin (IAA 91-93) has lived a life of reinvention since graduating from Interlochen Arts Academy in 1993. As an associate professor of media studies at University of Miami, his research is focused on the interplay between media industry studies and audience/fandom studies as related to television and film studies, critical black studies, sexuality, and gender studies. Prior to becoming an academic, he worked in public relations and marketing for consumer brands and founded his own marketing company.
He is the author of The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom (Indiana University Press, 2021) and editor of Rolling: Blackness and Mediated Comedy (Indiana University Press, 2024) and serves on the editorial boards of multiple journals. In addition to his scholarly writing, he has written for The Washington Post and Los Angeles Review of Books and has been interviewed/cited in The New York Times, USA Today, and NPR’s Marketplace, among others. He earned a PhD in communication and media studies from The University of Texas at Austin and continues to work as a ballet teacher and choreographer.
My engagement with the idea of reinvention started at Interlochen. The discipline, creativity, and curiosity that I developed there led me to look for a path that I found fulfilling … and when that path was no longer fulfilling, to look for something else. I learned to listen to myself and listen to the universe.