Tanisha is an acclaimed writer, historian, and professor working at the intersection of politics and culture.
About Tanisha
BOOKS BY TANISHA
In graduate school, I began developing the method that would come to define my scholarship: eclectic archiving.
I am an interdisciplinary historian. This means that historical methods ground my research, but I understand that I must use them in conjunction with other methods to reveal things for which the archives cannot explain or account. I expand an archive of paper records to include objects like family heirlooms, yearbooks, album covers, and vintage restaurant menus.
Eclectic archiving is the means by which I assemble and read these objects, vis-a-vis manuscript collections, oral interviews, and cultural ephemera. I take into account that objects have a different texture than paper documents - they live and breathe differently.
When I account for their different textures and tones, the result is a written body of work or a visual story that is multi-dimensional - ALIVE! - in its variegated narrative work. I love to piece together vibrant, untold histories of women who came of age during the turbulent 1960s. I aim to write stories that allow us to be messy and flawed, fully HUMAN. Learn more about my journey.
Writing a New Book
For the past several years, I’ve been quietly working on a book on the black women powerbrokers who raised millions of dollars for racial justice causes during the Civil Rights era. I’m happy to share that that book will be coming to a bookseller near you soon...if I can meet these writing deadlines, lol!
Developing a series for television
Dressed in Dreams has been optioned by Sony Pictures TV for a live-action series adaptation, produced by Gabrielle Union and Frieda Pinto! I am serving as a producer on the project. Learn more here.
Launching a research project
We’re taking TEXTURES to the next level. What started out as a passion project with a couple of my smartest, most creative colleague-friends is now becoming a multi-pronged, public-facing history project on the history of global black migration through objects.
Tanisha’s lectures take audiences on a rollercoaster ride of emotions, making history come alive for them in fresh new ways. She is also a thoughtful and innovative consultant who brings more than a decade of experience advising organizations—from the Chicago History Museum to Essence—on how to ethically and fastidiously center race and gender issues in the content they produce. She also advises corporations on ways to foster equity in the workplace.
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