Salamishah Tillet

Salamishah Tillet at the 2010 EMP Pop Music Conference in Seattle.

Salamishah Margaret Tillet (born August 25, 1975) is a scholar, activist, social critic, and media personality, and an associate professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.^[1] She is the co-founder of A Long Walk Home, a Chicago-based national non-profit organization that uses art to educate and empower young people to end violence against girls and women.^[2] In 2010, the University of Pennsylvania awarded Tillet the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Award for Distinguished Teaching by an Assistant Professor at the University. She was the 2010-2011 recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow for Career Enhancement; in 2013-14, she was a Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.^[3]

Education

Salamishah Tillet earned her B.A. in English and African American Studies in 1996 from the University of Pennsylvania, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.^[4] She earned her Masters in the Art of Teaching from Brown University in 1997 and later, her A.M. in English and American Literature in 2002 and Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization in 2007 from Harvard University. After earning her doctorate from Harvard, Tillet returned to the University of Pennsylvania to join the faculty in the English department in 2007.

History and Background

Tillet was born into a politically conscious household in Boston, and spent much of her childhood in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Orange, New Jersey. Tillet states that both of her parents were “inspired by the Black Power movement” ^[5] and that the origin of her name—Salam meaning peace in Arabic and Shah meaning royalty or kingly in Farsi—was a direct inspiration from the movement during the 1970s. Tillet states, “[My parents] interpreted the [syllable] ‘mi’ as black. So of course to my parents, it’s ‘peace, black, majestic.’ But etymologically, it’s ‘peace, majestic.’”

Before arriving to the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate, Tillet wanted to be a lawyer. But upon taking a literature and jazz course with her mentor Farah Jasmine Griffin (now the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia University), Tillet was committed to pursue academia. Tillet states that her childhood passion for literature, particularly the intersection of African-American studies and literature afforded her both “a mental home and a creative home for herself,” which also laid a foundation for her passions for literary and cultural criticism.^[6]

Tillet’s research interests include American Studies, twentieth and twenty-first century African American cultural studies and feminist theory. She has taught a variety of courses on African-American literature, Spike Lee, Nina Simone and creative non-fiction.^[7]

A Long Walk Home

In 2003, Salamishah and her sister, Scheherazade Tillet, co-founded A Long Walk Home, Inc., a 501 (c) Chicago-based national non-profit that uses art to educate and empower young people to end violence against girls and women. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem describes SOARS as “a gift” that “beautifully blends art, policy, and grassroots organizing to empower our most vulnerable and voiceless Americans.” ^[8]

Following the discovery of her sister’s story of being sexually assaulted in college, Scheherazade Tillet, then a rising college junior at Tufts University, grappled for a way to help her sister. To assist Salamishah in the process of healing from sexual violence, Scheherazade turned to social documentary photography as a way to record the various stages of Salamishah’s recovery. Upon the completion of the project, the Tillet sisters then wrote and directed Story of a Rape Survivor (SOARS), the multimedia performance on recovering from campus rape which became their flagship program. The SOARS College Initiatives now consist of the multimedia performance, public lectures, and trainings to end campus sexual assault for college students and administrators. In 2009, A Long Walk Home launched the Girl/Friends Young Leaders Institute for teen girls in Chicago, an artist-activist program for teen girls to advocate for themselves, their peers, and for gender and racial equality in their schools and communities. SOARS has presented at over 1000 colleges and in 40 states and Girl/Friends Youth Leaders have done trainings for over 10, 000 students in Chicago.^[9]

For its innovative and intersectional strategy to combat gender violence, ALWH has recently been featured in The New Yorker, NY Times, Washington Post, on CNN, MSNBC and NPR and been the recipient of major grants from the With and For Girls Collective and the NoVo Foundation. In 2010, Salamishah and Scheherazade were finalists for Glamour Magazine’s “Women of the Year” award for their work to end violence against girls and women.^[10]

Books and Publications

In 2012, Tillet published her first book entitled Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination (Duke University Press). The book examines how contemporary African American artists, writers, and intellectuals antebellum slavery within post-Civil Rights America in order to challenge the ongoing amnesia of slavery from America’s civic myths and to reimagine a democratic future.^[11]

Harvard University’s Alphonse Fletcher University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. calls it “an original contribution” and “a dazzling analysis of the many ways slavery lives in the contemporary imagination and colors our past, present, and future.” Swarthmore College President Valerie Smith notes “This book will transform the way we think about the place of African American cultural production in relation to 'post–civil rights era' political discourse.”

The foundation of the text initially began as an independent study project on eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century slave narratives by writers like during Tillet’s undergraduate career. Furthermore, she states that Sites of Slavery “concerns itself with big questions of citizenship, race, and democracy in the post-Civil Rights era. It comes out of my desire to understand why contemporary African-American artists and intellectuals are so preoccupied with returning to theme of slavery in their works and how their representations of the past help understand our racial present better.”^[12]

In 2010, Tillet co-edited the Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters Special Issue on Ethiopia.^[13] Her academic work has appeared in American Literary History, American Quarterly, Callaloo, Novel, Research in African Literatures, and Women's Review of Books. She is currently working on a book on the civil rights icon Nina Simone.^[14]

In 2011, she wrote the liner notes for the three-time Grammy-award winning album, Wake Up!, by John Legend and The Roots. In 2013, she published Gloria Steinem: The Kindle Singles Interview for Amazon.^[15] Tillet’s work as both a news contributor and activist have led her to appear on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC and NPR, written for The Atlantic, The Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, The Root, and Time. Tillet is also an associate producer of Aishah Shahidah Simmons’s groundbreaking film, “NO! The Rape Documentary.” Cambridge Documentary Films also featured her in the award-winning “Rape Is” ^[16] and she is also interviewed in the documentary, “The Amazing Nina Simone.”

Awards

In 2010, the University of Pennsylvania awarded Tillet with the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Award for Distinguished Teaching by an Assistant Professor at the University. Dr. Tillet was a 2010-2011 recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow for Career Enhancement. During that academic year, she served as a visiting fellow at the Center of African American Studies at Princeton University. In 2013-14, she was a Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture located in Harlem, NY.

For her leadership in activism and advancing girls and women’s rights, Tillet was named as one of the “Top 50 Global Leaders Ending Violence Against Children” by the Together for Girls’ Safe magazine and America’s “Top Leaders Under 30” by Ebony.

Personal life

Tillet is the mother of two children and lives with her partner in New Jersey.

Bibliography

Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012)

Gloria Steinem: The Kindle Singles Interview (Amazon Digital Services)

References

1. ↑ "Salamishah Tillet - English (Appointed Fall 2007)", Biography at University of Pennsylvania, English Department". 
2. ↑ "A Long Walk Home—About Us". 
3. ↑ "Salamishah Tillet - English (Appointed Fall 2007)", Biography at University of Pennsylvania, English Department". 
4. ↑ Kathryn Levy Feldman (21 August 2014). "Salamishah Tiller's Journey". The Pennsylvania Gazette. 
5. ↑ Kathryn Levy Feldman (21 August 2014). "Salamishah Tiller's Journey". The Pennsylvania Gazette. 
6. ↑ "Q&A with Salamishah Tillet". Penn Current. University of Pennsylvania. 24 January 2013. 
7. ↑ "Salamishah Tillet - English (Appointed Fall 2007)", Biography at University of Pennsylvania, English Department". 
8. ↑ "A Long Walk Home—About Us". 
9. ↑ "A Long Walk Home—About Us". 
10. ↑ Moore, Darryl L. and Aishah Shahidah Simmons. "Feminists We Love: Salamishah Tillet", The Feminist Wire, 15 February 2013.
11. ↑ "Salamishah Tillet - English (Appointed Fall 2007)", Biography at University of Pennsylvania, English Department" .
12. ↑ Moore, Darryl L. and Aishah Shahidah Simmons. "Feminists We Love: Salamishah Tillet", The Feminist Wire, 15 February 2013.
13. ↑ "Symposium: 'Place and Displacement in African American Literature'" (March 2012), Center for the Study of Women in Society". 
14. ↑ "Salamishah Tillet - English (Appointed Fall 2007)", Biography at University of Pennsylvania, English Department". 
15. ↑ "Gloria Steinem Kindle Singles Interview—Amazon". 
16. ↑ "Violence Against Women Documentary | Behind the NO! Camera" .

External links

1. Female Visibility Matters, Article for The New York Times Magazine, 7 August 2015.
2. Counterculture with Kweli Washington featuring Salamishah Tillet, Interview with Kweli Washington, 7 July 2015.
3. Nina Simone's Time is Now, Again, Article for The New York Times, 19 June 2015.
4. To Stop Violence, Start at Home, Article for The New York Times, 3 February 2015.
5. The Return of the Protest Song, Article for The Atlantic, 20 January 2015.
6. Passionate Present: Protecting Black Girlhood, The New School, Lecture with bell hooks, 5 May 2014.
7. Voices of Change, Penn's Women Center, The University of Pennsylvania, 5 March 2014.
8. Listen to Nina: Myth, Meme, and the Icon of a Movement, Scripps College Lecture, 26 February 2014.
9. Left of Black with Salamishah Tillet and Sohail Daulatzai, Franklin Center at Duke, 4 February 2013.
10. Opinion: Quentin Tarantino Creates an Exceptional Slave, Article for CNN, 25 December 2012.
11. Two Women: Meshell Ndegeocello's Praise Song for Nina Simone, Article for NPR, 24 October 2012.
12. My American Dream Sounds Like Nina Simone, Article for NPR, 2 July 2012.
13. Tedx Women: Gloria Steinem and Salamishah Tillet, Tedx Talks, Paley Center of Media, 8 December 2011.
14. Move to End Violence: Interviews with Salamishah Tillet and Gloria Steinem, Move to End Violence, 26 July 2011.
15. Left of Black with Salamishah Tillet and Marc Lamont Hill, Franklin Center at Duke, 6 December 2010.
16. Tillet Appearances on MSNBC
17. Articles for The Nation Magazine
18. Articles for The Root