Tijah Bumgarner (West Virginia, USA) is a filmmaker and professor. She teaches film production and journalism at Marshall University. Bumgarner holds a BFA in film/video from the California Institute of the Arts and an MA in Media Studies from West Virginia State University. As a doctoral candidate at Ohio University, her dissertation “Working Against the Past: De-stabilizing the Appalachian Image” explores how extraction is narrativized. Bumgarner’s experience growing up in West Virginia has inspired much of her work. In 2017, Bumgarner completed her first feature film, Meadow Bridge, a coming-of-age narrative set in rural West Virginia. Currently, she is collaborating with Jena Seiler on a documentary about the opioid epidemic in Appalachia. In both scholarship and practice, Bumgarner seeks to disrupt stereotypes that conform to a single defining narrative of the region.
Tijah Bumgarner: Portfolio 