Rutgers Newark Professor Earns Pulitzer Prize: ‘I’m Overjoyed’

NEWARK, NJ — A professor at Rutgers-Newark has earned a prestigious Pulitzer Prize for her essays on race in arts and culture.

Salamishah Tillet garnered an award in criticism for her essays, which were published in The New York Times, the Pulitzer Prize board announced Monday.

According to the board, Tillet earned her award for authoring “learned and stylish writing about Black stories in art and popular culture – work that successfully bridges academic and nonacademic critical discourse.”

“I’m overjoyed,” Tillet said after learning of the board’s decision. “I’m deeply honored and humbled by this recognition of my work.”

Tillet is a Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers-Newark and the director of Express Newark, a center for socially engaged art and design that brings together the campus community and city residents. She joined the faculty in 2018.

Tillet, who lives in Newark, received a bachelor's degree in English and Afro-American studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a master of arts degree in teaching from Brown University, and a doctorate in American studies from Harvard University.

Rutgers-Newark offered more details about Tillet’s impressive contributions to journalism:

“A contributing writer for The New York Times since 2015, Tillet’s work covers popular culture, gender, sexuality, race and politics as they play out in both popular entertainment and high art, from Netflix series to museum exhibitions … Her recent work includes the podcast series ‘Because of Anita,’ which focuses on the impact of Hill’s 1991 testimony at hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, where she accused him of sexually harassing her. Tillet is the author of ‘Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination’ and ‘In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece.’ She was recently awarded the 2020 Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grant for her work-in-progress, ‘All The Rage: Mississippi Goddam and the World Nina Simone Made.’”

Tillet said the murder of George Floyd and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests have informed the way she approaches her role as a journalist and critic.

“I really wanted to pay attention to the ways in which culture and art can both be an indicator of change and also perhaps an alternative to the problems that we have today,” Tillet said.

“Most of my work over the last year was looking at how Broadway or television or films or photographs have explored this loss but also offered us solace, and particularly the role of Black artists as a way of understanding how to get through what is really a traumatic and profound moment for our nation,” Tillet added.

Tillet said Rutgers-Newark has nurtured her projects at the university, including “Black Portraiture[s] VII: Play & Performance,” a conference that included the acclaimed photography exhibition, “Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility,” featuring work by 85 Black girls, women and genderqueer artists from ages 8 to 94. It was curated by her sister, photographer Scheherazade Tillet, and Zoraida Lopez-Diago, and will be on view at Express Newark through July.

“My colleagues, especially at Express Newark and in Africana Studies and the MFA program, are real guides for my work and I’m just honored to be at a university that gives me the space to imagine and to collaborate and to really focus on art that matters to the city of Newark but also hopefully can change lives,” Tillet said.

Rutgers-Newark Chancellor Nancy Cantor said Tillet is a “brilliantly incisive observer and artist-activist,” who “amplifies voices that we all need to hear.”

“She is so deserving of the recognition of a Pulitzer Prize,” Cantor added.

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