ABOUT TANYA B
Tanya Boucicaut is a multihyphenate. She is an artist, writer, TED-Ed Educator, minister, youth advocate, and former assistant professor at a large research institution. Tanya has spent over ten years in higher education. As of August 2023, she transitioned from being an assistant professor to becoming an editor for a nonprofit in California, as well as supporting comrades in education and students through her digital educational network and consulting business,
Tanya is the author/scriptwriter of the TED-Ed Lesson, “Can love and independence coexist?” about the acclaimed author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, directed by Tomás Pichardo-Espaillat. She is the guest co-editor for the Journal of American Folklore special issue, “African American Expressive Culture, Protest, Imagination, and Dreams of Blackness” and United Against Racism: Churches for Change. Tanya’s first play, What I Said I’d Never Do, written as a high school student, was produced in 2005. As a member of The Untethered, a trope of BIPOC Theatre alumni, her latest vignette, “From Therapy to Therapy,” was a part of the 2020 “Homecoming” online production for the College of William and Mary Theatre, Speech, and Dance Department. She has been featured on television, radio, and podcasts.
She is a Class of 2021 Television Academy Foundation Internship program member. Her host site was the Jim Henson Company. Previously, she was an intern for Soulidifly Productions.
As an M.F.A. graduate student, she founded a nonprofit youth theatre, Perfect Love Community Youth Theatre, which is currently being reimagined. The major program, the Courage Summer Workshop, ran for two summers. During that time, the program's students were featured on television and had a three-city tour. She is also the former program director for her alma mater, Virginia Union University's STREAM Youth Theology Institute. While working with STREAM, Tanya had the opportunity to co-create the first graduate theological writing at Virginia Union University School of Theology, create the first theological writing course for graduate students, and serve as an integral member of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) accreditation team.
Tanya is a current Writing and Rhetoric Ph.D. student at George Mason University (with a minor in e-Learning Technologies). She holds an M.F.A. in Theatre Pedagogy from Virginia Commonwealth University with a focus on adapting fairy tales, an M.Div. from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University, a B.A. in English from the College of William, a Youth and Theology Certificate from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a graduate certification in e-Learning Technologies (Instructional Design) from George Mason University.
Her interdisciplinary research interests include community writing, Hip Hop rhetoric, theatre, youth studies, fairy tales, Black aesthetics, television and film development, festival studies, technology, and African American religion.
Tanya is a 2016 recipient of the “Keep the Dream Alive” Award for Outstanding Educational Achievement from the Virginia Beach Interdenominational Ministers Conference.
She is a lover of Hip Hip who proudly wears her grills for special occasions. Most recently, for Spring 2023, she had a once-in-a-lifetime experience sharing her love of Hip Hop through a special topics course called NEXT 240: Reading Tech, Media, and Culture: When do you fall in love with Hip Hop?