Tanisha M. Jackson (she/her/hers) joins the Department of African American Studies (AAS) in the College of Arts & Sciences in Fall 2022 as a tenure-track assistant professor and the executive director of the Community Folk Art Center. Her initial academic appointment at SU began in 2019 as a Professor of Practice in AAS. She will teach classes in African Diaspora Art, including Art of the Black World and Contemporary Black Film.

Prior to joining Syracuse University, Jackson returned to her alma mater, The Ohio State University (OSU), to serve as the assistant director of The Frank W. Hale, Jr. Black Cultural Center. Before OSU, she worked at the University of Cincinnati (UC) from 2016 -2018 as a senior instructional designer in the Center for Excellence in e-Learning and adjunct professor in the Africana Studies department. There she taught classes in Black popular culture, film, art, and literature.

Jackson’s research focuses on the representation of Black women’s wellness in contemporary art and popular culture in multimedia and community spaces. She is currently working on a single-authored manuscript. She has also published peer-reviewed articles internationally and nationally, including Me-Telling: Recovering the Black Female Body Through Digital Narratives and Mixed Methods” Visual Culture and Gender Journal v.8. 2013, and “Visual Images and Worldview in a Self-Reflective Millennial Space” in The Journal of GEARTE, 2018.

Concurrently, Jackson’s other research focuses on community-based arts and arts education as a form of liberation and social activism. To which she evaluates applied strategies specific to African Diaspora community spaces. This area of interest connects her role as an arts administrator to scholarship. She published the article In Conversation with Jaleel Campbell: Cultivating Pleasure Through Community-based Art in the City of Syracuse in the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, 2020. Along with publishing, Jackson is the founder of a short film series, Black Arts Speak (BAS), that highlights the work and praxis of contemporary Black artists and their impact within their respective communities.