Biography
Tamisha A. Tyler, PhD, is a public theologian, educator, and artist. She currently serves as Co-Director of Level Ground, an award-winning nonprofit artist collective and documentary film company. Her work focuses on Theopoetics and the arts, Afrofuturism, and worldbuilding, with her most recent project centering on the work and legacy of Octavia E. Butler. Her publications include a chapter on “Theopoetic Method: Four Movements” in Theopoetics in Color (Eerdmans, 2024) and “Beyoncé Mass and Black Women’s Flourishing” in Ethics and Christian Musiking (Routlage, 2021). She holds several leadership appointments, including Co-Chair of the Black Caucus for AAR-Western and Co-Editor of the online blog for Feminist Studies in Religion. Dr. Tyler holds years of teaching experience, which includes a Louisville Postdoctoral Appointment at Bethany Theological Seminary. Her work has been supported by FTE, Wabash, Louisville Institute, Sacred Writes, and The Martin Institute.
Candidate Statement
Unlike many PhD graduates, I did not seek to be a tenure-track professor. I wanted to bring my skills into the public sphere through Arts nonprofits. I gained several years of experience in the nonprofit world before being awarded the Louisville Postdoctoral Fellowship. Teaching as a full-time contingent faculty member for the last four years has really opened my eyes, not only to the love of the classroom, but to the realities of the contingent life. We talk so much about the dream of being a professor, but no one actually prepares you for the reality of being a contingent faculty member. As I am learning to navigate these realities, I am asking questions about the systemic inequities that so many contingent faculty face. Much of the conversation is bleak. But I believe that there is still much work to be done. Not only have I spent all of my teaching career as contingent faculty, but I also currently serve on the Academic Labor and Contingent Faculty Committee, where I have helped talk through aspects of academic labor and understanding of what contingent faculty need. My hope in this position is to hear the stories of contingent faculty and to help shape pathways towards potential solutions. This means working with institutions to address the reality of the overwhelming number of contingent faculty who are left without institutional protections or benefits. I would also create spaces to think about the various ways that people can utilize their skill sets outside of teaching appointments that still feel connected to their scholarship. How do we re-imagine theological and religious education in a way that addresses inequity but also acknowledges the work being done both inside and outside of the classroom? What are the supplemental resources that contingent faculty need to be able to do what they love and not have to starve? There is a way for us to face these realities together, and I hope that the work we do in this committee will be a North Star and guiding light for us to get to a place of abundance over scarcity, collaboration over competition, and creating pathways of possibility as opposed to upholding roadblocks of tradition.