By Lucy Berbeo | Photography by Stephanie Yantz

Doctoral candidate Jessica Lee always knew she belonged at UCLA — even if she had to chart a path here on her own terms. “It was — and still is — my dream school, and I was gutted when I didn’t get in for undergrad,” she says. Undaunted, after transferring from Santa Monica College and graduating from UC Irvine, she reapplied at the master’s level: “I told myself, if I get in I’m going to meet as many people as possible, take transdisciplinary courses across campus and be uninhibited in my search for community.”

Realizing her dream, Lee earned two master’s degrees from UCLA, one in African American studies and the other in English, and is now completing her doctorate in English as one of UCLA’s two UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellows for 2022–23. The self-described bibliophile also received UCLA’s Carolyn See Graduate Fellowship in Southern California & Los Angeles Literature in support of her work on groundbreaking science fiction author Octavia E. Butler.

Drawing on four novels by trailblazing Black women — Butler, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor — Lee explores Black women’s lives on and off the page through the lens of the Black Atlantic by reimagining transatlantic slavery, principally the Middle Passage, in unearthing places of belonging, origin spaces and diasporic mobility, both physical and otherwise.

“African Americans or Black people occupy this limbo state. Even if unable to locate tangible, geographical sites of freedom, there’s a type of psychic experiential and experimental freedom accessible when you’re able to imagine other worlds,” she says. “I can see myself in all of these novels’ protagonists, and I’m sure there’s a plethora of other individuals who can, too.”

This vision to author her own story — and to help others do the same — inspires Lee’s service as a peer mentor in the UCLA Center for Community College Partnerships, which helped pave her path to the UC system years ago. It also drives her work at a local community college, where as an adjunct faculty member she prepares her students to find their way to world-class institutions like UCLA — and to confidently chart their own course while uplifting others once they arrive.

Looking ahead, Lee is excited by the positions and possibilities awaiting her, whether she’ll continue to expand the research and scholarship of the academy or pen a completely new chapter at the intersections of her biggest passions — fashion, travel, film and food — perhaps as editor-in-chief of a Condé Nast publication.

“I think scholars can do it all and have multiple interests,” she says. “We can become educators, researchers and authors, but we can also push parameters. The skills that academia equips us with are limitless assets, and it’s those possibilities that are most worth tapping into.”