Jennifer M. Wilks is an associate professor of English, African & African Diaspora Studies, and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, where she directs the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies. Her new book, Carmen in Diaspora: Adaptation, Race, and Opera’s Most Famous Character, is a cultural history of Carmen adaptations set in African diasporic contexts. Wilks is also the author of Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Césaire, Dorothy West, which explores the legacies of gender and race in the Harlem Renaissance and Negritude movements. She has been a visiting professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 and the Université Paris Nanterre. At UT Austin, Wilks has been recognized at the department, college, and university levels for her teaching.
2024 Festival Session