Rate My Professor Salamishah Tillet

Salamishah Tillet is the Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - Newark, where she contributes to the Literature faculty through her work in English and creative writing programs. She holds multiple leadership roles, including Founding Director of the New Arts Justice Initiative, Executive Director of Express Newark—a center for socially engaged art and design—and Associate Director of the Clement Price Institute on Race and Ethnic Studies. Tillet received her Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization and A.M. in English from Harvard University, her M.A.T. from Brown University, and her B.A. in English and Afro-American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. Her research specializations encompass American Studies, twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American literature, film, popular music, cultural studies, and feminist theory.

Prior to joining Rutgers, Tillet served as the Robert S. Blank Presidential Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her key publications include the book Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination (Duke University Press, 2012) and In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece (Abrams Press, 2021). She co-edited a special issue of Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters on Ethiopia (2010), authored articles in American Literary History, American Quarterly, Novel, and Research in African Literatures, contributed liner notes to John Legend and The Roots’ three-time Grammy-winning album Wake Up! (2010), and published Gloria Steinem: The Kindle Singles Interview (2013). Tillet has received the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for her contributions to The New York Times, Emerson Collective Fellowship (2025), Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2025), Woodrow Wilson Foundation Career Enhancement Fellowship (2010-11), and Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Award for Distinguished Teaching (2010). As co-founder of A Long Walk Home, Inc., she leverages art to address violence against women and girls. Her influence extends through public writing in The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Guardian, media appearances on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR, and curatorial projects advancing social justice.