Grace: What has inspired you to pursue film studies?

Tiya: I study film and media because I love them. It produces a yearning in me for more. More of what, I don't know. Connection. Pleasure. Curiosity. Uncertainty. So, this might be very self-indulgent to say, but I think it’s my own yearning that has really driven me towards a career in film scholarship. That's all very philosophical and abstract, so more concretely, I will say that I am very moved by scholars who think about their intellectual labor as something that contributes to communities outside of academia. These are scholars who embrace non-traditional forms of knowledge production, who believe that there are multiple ways of being, and knowing, and producing, and I think as COVID persists and it continues to really shake the foundation of a lot of our institutions, including academia, we need to be more creative with how we imagine and envision what scholarship can be. And so I'm really influenced by scholars who have really big and radical and fun imaginations for their work and for academia as an institution.

Grace: Tell me more about your master’s thesis, Fandom for Black Girls: Black Panther and Digital Fandom.

Tiya: That project really emerged out of two things. One, my personal interest and enjoyment in fandom. Fandom is a personal investment for me. Also, I just had a desire to see more scholarship on black fandoms which there continues to be a scarcity of in fan studies. And, the landscape of fan studies is definitely changing. There are scholars like Kristin Warner and Alford, L Martin and Rebecca Lonzo among others who are writing about black fans and calling for more inclusive and imaginative discipline, but there there's still more work to be done.

One of the earlier and pervasive assumptions within fan studies was that fan spaces, because they're supposed to be fun and motivated by pleasure and love of a fan object, especially in digital spaces, they're supposed to be utopian and democratic and equitable. And another assumption was that fan identities were more important than other identities like race and sexuality and gender. So for instance, on Tumblr, you would be a Sherlock fan first. That's your primary identity. But, what you discover when you're looking at non-white fandoms, in particular, is that black fandoms really trouble this assumption. In looking at these fandoms, we discovered that a lot of black fans see themselves as negotiating multiple fluid identities in their fan practice and that really shapes their interactions with black and non-black fans.

So for this project, I examined a blog post. So I was really doing some discourse analysis. I was also looking at fan content like fan fiction to make sense of how black women were generating distinctive content in response to black Panthers visibility and its success. What I found was that black women were really interested in producing fan texts that resist anti-black fandom practices and they were doing that by foregrounding representations of blackness. For them, that really did resist the mechanics of code switching and cultural translation.

Grace: What has your experience been as a woman of color in film studies?

Tiya: At times, it's very alienating and lonely and I have often been one of very few women of color in my program, obviously. So, I sometimes feel like my ways of being and knowing and questioning are not always welcome and that there are particular forms of cultural and folk knowledge that I deeply value that I don't always know how to bring into a seminar or into my work. I choose to do it anyway because in order for me to continue in this work, in order for it to be sustainable, I have to do it in ways that feel authentic and meaningful, but that has come at a great cost.

I will say that in the midst of it being lonely and alienating, I have also had very wonderful, generous, brilliant tender-hearted mentors who have definitely taken me under their wing and have nurtured my interest and my potential. These are also people who I've communicated my desire for authenticity too. And they see that and give me opportunities to live that out, whether that is letting me experiment with different writing styles and seminar papers or passing along opportunities to me to host events and to speak. So, these are people and opportunities that have really empowered me and then live with me on this journey as a black woman in academia.

Grace: What other challenges have you encountered in your academic career?

Tiya: Great question. Unsurprisingly imposter syndrome is a very powerful force, and I think many students know what it is like to be in a room with peers who are very brilliant and well-read and creative, who it feels like they have watched more films than you, that they have read more books than you, and they make you wonder if you have ever had a good or original idea in your whole life. That feeling can sometimes be definitely amplified when you are engaging with the work of creators and scholars that you deeply admire. Pretty often there's like a huge gap between where you are on your journey and where you want to be, and that gap makes you question whether or not you will ever get to that place. Is it possible? Do you have what it takes?

Lately those questions just felt like the wrong questions. They're questions that attack me all the time, but they're not useful. All they do is make me anxious. They really do magnify the sense that I have snuck in through the back door and, at any moment, someone's going to ask me a question and realize that I have no idea what I'm talking about. So, instead of asking questions like, “do I have what it takes?” “Is this even possible?” I have tried to focus my questions on things that are more immediate and that generate ideas.

Some of those questions for me lately have been, “what are some ideas or theoretical problems that I'm really preoccupied with or that I spend a lot of time thinking about and reading about?” “What is a pattern or a formal technique that is standing out to me right now in the films or media that I'm engaging with?” “Who are some peers that I can collaborate with on a project?” I find that those questions lead me to do good work, and they energize me rather than paralyze me because it's not about where I'm going to be in five years. It is simply about what I'm interested in in the moment and that that should drive your academic work. I think that that's a really great combatant towards imposter syndrome which really has been my greatest challenge.

Grace: What excites you about being a part of Visions 10?

Tiya: As a UNCW alumni, I have a deep loving relationship with vision as a conference and a festival. I really love that Visions showcases the intellectual and creative labors of undergraduate students. I have also loved the alumni workshop series and the questions that are being asked about finding your way, both in the film industry, but also in academia. These are questions that I still have, and I wish I had been asking them more seriously as an undergraduate and Visions really does create a space for that. I love that there was a panel on diversity and inclusion in the film industry and in film studies. we always need to be having that conversation and we need people in the room who are not only eager to theorize about it, but who are also eager to take action and do something.

Also, I am just excited to be a part of something that has been a part of my own intellectual and creative journey for the last few years. I'm thinking of my keynote address as a way of sharing my own journey, sure, but it also feels like a space to offer up my musings on film studies and filmmaking in the time of COVID and to have people respond with their own questions, their own musings, and their own yearnings. That's really exciting to me. So, I'm really thinking about my involvement less as this didactic speaking opportunity and more as a continuation of the very salient conversation's already in motion.