Contact Information
702 South Wright Street
Urbana IL 61801
Office Hours
Research Areas
Biography
Victoria T. Fields is a former McNair Scholar and B1G Academic Alliance and Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) fellow. Currently, Victoria is a doctoral candidate and Instructor of Record in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Victoria's research centers on Black women's rhetoric, rhetorical history, archival rhetorics, social movements, and sports, with a graduate minor in Gender and Women’s Studies. At Illinois, Victoria was awarded the 2023 Ebony Excellence Award for Instructor of the Year by the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois.
In 2024, Victoria was awarded the Dianne Pinderhughes Fellowship Award from the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois to support her dissertation research. In 2024, Victoria was also selected as a fellow for the National Women's Studies Association’s (NWSA) Women of Color Leadership Project (WOCLP) and accepted into the Oral History Center's Advanced Summer Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. Victoria also co-founded the Women of Color Section at the National Communication Association.
In 2025, the Association for American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) awarded Victoria the 2025 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award. Victoria was also recently selected into the National Communication Association's 2025 cohort of the Doctoral Honors Seminar.
Her work has been published in Volume 11 of the Eastern Michigan University McNair Scholars Journal and Bloomsbury Press, along with co-authorship in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, the Sociology of Sport Journal, and Political Communication.
Education
B.S in Communication and Sport Management, Eastern Michigan University, Summa Cum Laude
M.A in Communication (Rhetoric concentration), University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign
Grants
Burleson Award, The Department of Communication, 2025
Ruth Anne Clark Award, The Department of Communication, 2024
The Color Purple Travel Award, The Organization for the Study of Communication, Language and Gender, 2024
Dianne Pinderhughes Fellowship Award, Department of African American Studies, 2024
Andrea Lunsford Diversity Fund Award, Rhetoric Society of America, 2024
Graduate College Conference Travel Award, 2021, 2024
President's Research in Diversity Travel Assistance (Competitive Award) Program, 2023
Student Caucus Travel Grant, National Communication Association, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023
Friends Travel Support Award, Department of Communication, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
Dianne Pinderhughes Fellowship Award Honorable Mention, Department of African American Studies, 2023
Awards and Honors
Wayne Brockriede Summer Graduate Fellowship in Communication, 2023
Ebony Excellence Instructor of the Year awarded by the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois, 2023
Certificate of Recognition for Black Staff of the Year Runner Up awarded by the Central Black Student Union at the University of Illinois, 2023
Elizabeth Winter Young Summer Fellowship, 2020
Wayne Brockriede Graduate Fellow in Communication, 2021-2023
UIUC Humanities Research Institute: Humanities Without Walls Graduate Research Fellow , 2022
Certificate of Achievement in Recognition of Academic Achievements Related to Health Equity, Access, and Justice awarded by Champaign-Urbana Public Health District and their Equity Council, 2022
Illinois Summer Pre-doctoral Institute Fellow, 2019
Illinois ASPIRE Fellow, 2019-2020
List of Teachers Ranked as “Excellent” by Their Students, Fall 2019, Fall *2020, Spring *2021, *Fall 2021, *Spring 2022 *Fall 2023, *Spring 2023, *Fall 2023, Spring 2024; Fall 2024 (* Connotes ratings were "Outstanding.")
Courses Taught
*CMN 101: Public Speaking
*CMN 210: Public Communication in Everyday Life
*CMN 340: Visual Politics
**CMN 250: Social Movement Communication
*CMN 214: Organizational Communication & Diversity
*connotes Instructor of Record
**connotes Course Assistant
Additional Campus Affiliations
Graduate College Grad Hourly Position - Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Office, 2022-2023
Graduate Representative for the Department of Communication's Diversity, Equity and Justice Committee, 2022-2023
Graduate Minor in Gender and Women's Studies, 2021-2022
Graduate College Executive Committee, Graduate Representative, 2021-2023
We CU Community Engaged Scholars Program, Team Lead, 2021
Students Advising on Graduate Education (SAGE), 2020-2021
In the News:
"Victoria Fields receives prestigious award recognizing future leaders," Ann Arbor Times (2025)
"EMU alum honored with prestigious 2025 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award," EMU Today (2025)
"Five Graduate Students Honored with K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award," Association for American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) (2025)
Engaged Pedagogy, Teach Talk Listen and Learn Podcast, Center for Teaching and Learning, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (2024)
"Humanities Without Walls connects PhD students with community organizations" (2022)
Highlighted Publications
Journal Articles
Fields, V. T., (forthcoming) “Third World Women’s Alliance and Black Woman's Manifesto” In Feminism and Feminist Movement in America: An Encyclopedia of Ideals and Activism, edited by Sarah Kornfield, Bloomsbury Press.
Smith, M. A., Myers, C. L., Chong, M., Clark, M. D., Lim, S., Rollins, D. D., Fields, V. T., Rodrigues, L., Njonge, W., & Martin, O. (2025). Rooted in white identity politics: Tracing the genealogy of critical race theory discourse in identity-based disinformation. Political Communication.
Knoester, C., Allison, R., & Fields, V. T. (2023). Reconstructing, challenging, and negotiating sex/gender in sport: U.S. public opinion about transgender athletes' rights, rights for athletes with varied sex characteristics, sex testing, and gender segregation. Sociology of Sport Journal. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2022-0121
Knoester, C., & Fields, V. T. (2020). Mother–child engagement in sports and outdoor activities: Intensive mothering, purposive leisure, and implications for health and relationship closeness. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 55(7), 933–952. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690219855916
Fields, V. T., (2018). "The rhetorical discourse surrounding female intersex athletes." McNair Scholars Research Journal, 1(11), p. 31-43.
Book Reviews
Fields, V. T. (2022). Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World. Quarterly Journal of Speech.