Assistant Director of Undergraduate Admissions Assistant Director of Undergraduate Admissions
Tamara Watkins, Ph.D., is the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Admissions at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts, and her work focuses on communications. In addition to her work in Admissions, Watkins has taught classes on film, television, and writing topics in the VCU Department of English. Her research interests include adaptation studies, American popular culture, and religion in American culture and media.
Watkins holds a Ph.D. in media, art, and text from VCU. Her dissertation, “(Re)Mediating the Spirit: Evangelical Christian Young Adult Media,” is an analysis of the structural and thematic similarities between evangelical Christian young adult media and secular young adult media, focusing on novel-length fiction, graphic novels, and video games. Additionally, Watkins holds an M.A. in communication and multimedia from Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU). Her M.A. capstone project, “Verbville,” is a multimedia approach to English as a Second Language education and features animations and games that she created. Watkins also holds a B.A. in English, language concentration, and a minor in philosophy from SVSU.
A first-generation college student, Watkins understands how university staff and faculty members can positively shape a student’s experience as they work toward their academic goals. She feels exceptionally lucky to have her dream career — helping students and getting paid to write. Watkins’s favorite punctuation mark is a tie between the semicolon and the serial comma. If given the opportunity, she will give a mini diachronic linguistics lecture about why we use ‘s in modern English to show possession. She might also tell you why she wishes the letters þ and ð were still used in English. Despite all of this, Watkins insists that she actually is fun at parties.