Filmmaker selected for yearlong fellowship in Greece
The Office of Fellowships is thrilled to announce that Tanisha Tekriwal (SoC ’23) has been chosen for the 2023–2024 cohort of the Anatolia College Postgraduate Fellowship! Tanisha will spend the next year working in Greece through the fellowship.
Tanisha is a graduating senior from Ahmedabad and Mumbai, India, majoring in RTVF and creative writing. They are a writer and filmmaker interested in stories of language, family, gender, class, and empire. During their time at Northwestern, Tanisha has pursued research opportunities in a variety of fields. She was awarded a Franke Undergraduate Fellowship by the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities to complete a research-based 
documentary project that investigates South Asian vocal representation in American media; a Summer Undergraduate Research Grant to write a TV pilot inspired by the madwomen of Indian soap operas; and an Academic Year Undergraduate Research Grant to create a short film that seeks to reimagine the call center.
Before taking on these independent projects, Tanisha worked as a research assistant for Associate Professor of Instruction Lisa Del Torto, in the Cook Family Writing Program, as the recipient of a grant from the Baker Program in Undergraduate Research; and for Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities Daniel Immerwahr, in the Department of History, as a Leopold Fellow. These roles were vital in developing her understanding of the research process and enabled her to undertake independent work. The skills that were acquired and honed in these positions also equipped Tanisha to create two short films at Northwestern with support from the Studio22 Bindley Grant and the Advanced Directing Sequence, respectively. Tanisha is grateful for the opportunities that Northwestern has afforded her these past four years, as well as the deep connections with faculty and peers that it engendered.
Beyond the classroom, Tanisha has worked as a resident assistant in the South Area and currently works at the CAGE, an on-campus equipment rental house for filmmaking gear. In their senior year, Tanisha served as the co-president of the Multicultural Filmmakers Collective, a student club that serves both as a funding body for multicultural films as well as a safe space for multicultural filmmakers and narratives at Northwestern. She also spent her sophomore and junior years on the editorial team for Helicon, Northwestern’s literary and arts magazine, serving first on the poetry board, then on the art board. Tanisha credits these activities with fostering her growth as a creator and a community member and is excited to apply her learnings in her new position at Anatolia.
Most recently, Tanisha was awarded the Edwin L. Shuman Award for Best Honors Thesis in Creative Writing for “AUR,” a novel-in-progress about a translator, and she hopes that the beautiful landscapes of Greece can further inspire her writing.
Tanisha is the third Wildcat chosen for the fellowship after Naomi Banuelos-Lozano (WCAS '21) won the award last year and Lydia Hartman (SoC ’20) was selected in 2020.
Contact Amy Kehoe at amy.kehoe@northwestern.edu to learn more about the Anatolia College Postgraduate Fellowship.