Jennifer M. Wilks
Associate Professor — Ph.D., 2003, Cornell University
Associate Professor of English

Contact
- E-mail: jmwilks@austin.utexas.edu
- Phone: 512-471-1784
- Office: GWB 2.202B
- Office Hours: Please email for appointment.
- Campus Mail Code: D7200
Interests
Comparative African American and Caribbean literatures, contemporary African diasporic literature, Francophone literature and culture, women's and gender studies
Biography
Jennifer M. Wilks is an Associate Professor of English, African and African Diaspora Studies, and Comparative Literature. She is the author of Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Césaire, Dorothy West (Louisiana State UP, 2008), which explores the gendered constructs and legacies of the Harlem Renaissance and Negritude movements. Her essays have appeared in African-American Review, Callaloo, Comparative Literature Studies, Modern Fiction Studies, and Small Axe. Her translation (French to English) of the 19th-century French and Swiss diaries of African American activist Mary Church Terrell was published in Palimpsest. Wilks is currently at work on two book projects: a history of adaptations of the Carmen story set in African diasporic contexts and a study of representations of race and apocalypse in contemporary literature and culture. She spent spring 2013 as a visiting professor in the Département du Monde Anglophone at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 and in 2013-2014 served as co-director of the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies (TILTS), whose theme was “Reading Race in Literature and Film.” In spring 2019 Wilks chaired Black Studies at 50: 1968/1969, UT’s second biennial Black Studies conference.
Recent Publications:
“Dominican Décalage: Comparative Negotiations of Race and Gender in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Comparative Literature Studies 56.2 (2019): 348-373.
“‘Black Matters’: Race and Literary History in Mat Johnson’s Pym.” European Journal of American Studies (EJAS) 11.1 (2016) https://ejas.revues.org/11523.
“Revolutionary Genealogies: Suzanne Césaire’s and Christiane Taubira’s Writings of Dissent.” Small Axe 19.3 (2015): 91-101.
“The French and Swiss Diaries of Mary Church Terrell, 1888-1889.” Introduction and translation. Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International. 3.1 (2014): 8-32.
“Black Modernist Women at the Parisian Crossroads.” Escape from New York: The New Negro Renaissance Beyond Harlem. Eds. Davarian L. Baldwin and Minkah Makalani. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. 227-245.
“Writing Home: Comparative Black Modernism and Form in Jean Toomer and Aimé Césaire.” Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic: Literature, Modernity, and Diaspora. Eds. Jeremy Braddock and Jonathan P. Eburne. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2013. 101-123.
Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Césaire, and Dorothy West. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.
Presentations:
The Harlem Renaissance (Austin, June 2014).
Awards and Honors:
Wilks is a member of the inaugural Texas 10, the annual recognition of top University of Texas at Austin professors by Alcalde, the official publication of the Texas Exes. She is also a recipient of the Harry Ransom Award for Teaching Excellence (College of Liberal Arts, 2018), Thomas Cable Upper-Division Teaching Award (Department of English, 2010), and the Raymond Dickson Substantial Writing Component Teaching Award (College of Liberal Arts, 2006).