Jennifer Wilks is an associate professor of English & African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also serves as Director of the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies. Her latest book, Carmen in Diaspora: Adaptation, Race, and Opera’s Most Famous Character (Oxford UP, 2024), is a cultural history of Carmen adaptations set in African diasporic contexts. Her previous book, Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Césaire, Dorothy West (LSU P, 2008), explores the gendered legacies of the Harlem Renaissance and Negritude. An award-winning teacher, Wilks is a member of the inaugural Texas 10, the Texas Exes’ annual recognition of top UT Austin professors, and a recipient of the Harry Ransom Award for Teaching Excellence and the Thomas Cable Upper-Division Teaching Award. As part of her commitment to encouraging a love of literature and learning outside of the classroom as well as within, Wilks has moderated discussions or participated in events with the Austin Public Library, Humanities Texas, Del Valle High School, Texas Book Festival, Austin Public Library Foundation, Austin Playhouse, Austin African American Book Festival, Austin Film Society, and the Writers’ League of Texas. Wilks serves on the board of Austin Opera and is a member of the President’s Advisory Council of Bryn Mawr College, her undergraduate alma mater.
