Rebecca Ann Wanzo (born 1975) is an American academic specializing in African-American literature and culture,

critical race theory Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary examination, by social and civil-rights scholars and activists, of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. Goa ...

fan studies Fan studies is an academic discipline that analyses fans, fandoms, fan cultures and fan activities, including fanworks. It is an interdisciplinary field located at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences, which emerged in the early ...

, and feminist theory. She is a professor and chair of the women, gender, and

sexuality studies Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field ...

department at Washington University in St. Louis. Wanzo's 2020 book, ''The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging'', won the Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work.

Early life and education

Wanzo was born 1975 in Dayton, Ohio. She is the daughter of Margaret Wanzo. She attended Lincoln Elementary and Stivers Middle schools. Wanzo is also a part of Muse Machine,

Dayton Art Institute The Dayton Art Institute (DAI) is a museum of fine arts in Dayton, Ohio, United States. The Dayton Art Institute has been rated one of the top 10 best art museums in the United States for children. The museum also ranks in the top 3% of all art mus ...

, and Dayton Playhouse. She graduated from

Colonel White High School Colonel White High School was built in 1929 in Dayton Ohio. It stood on the corner of Wabash and Niagara in Upper Dayton View until it was demolished in 2008. Colonel White was named for Colonel William Jeremiah White, an officer who fought in t ...

in 1993. Wanzo majored in English, History, Black World Studies, and American studies at Miami University where she graduated, ''

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...

'', in May 1997. Her senior honors thesis advisor was

Andrew Cayton Andrew R. L. Cayton (May 9, 1954 – December 17, 2015) was a scholar of early American history. He taught at Harvard, Wellesley, Ball State, and, from 1990 to 2015, at Miami University (Ohio). In 2015 he was appointed Warner Woodring Chair in H ...

who described Wanzo as, "...one of the three or four best students I've seen in 17 years of teaching." Wanzo was one of 95 students nationwide to win a Mellon Fellowship in humanistic studies. Wanzo completed a Ph.D. in English with certificates in women's studies and African and African American studies at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

in 2003. Her dissertation was titled ''The reading cure and other sentimental interventions: reading contemporary sentimentality through African American women's narratives''. Her doctoral advisor was Wahneema H. Lubiano.

Career

Wanzo joined Ohio State University in 2003 as an assistant professor in the departments of women's studies and African American and African studies. She was promoted to associate professor in the departments of women's studies and English in 2009. In the Fall of 2010, Wanzo joined Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis as a visiting professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies. She was promoted to associate professor in July 2011 and full professor and chair of women, gender, and sexuality studies in July 2020. Her 2020 book, ''The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging'' won the Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award of the

Society for Cinema and Media Studies The Society for Cinema and Media Studies (formerly the Society for Cinema Studies) is an organization of professors and scholars. Its home office is at the University of Oklahoma, but it has members throughout the world. SCMS holds an annual confer ...

, the Charles Hatfield Book Prize of the

Comics Studies Society Comics studies (also comic art studies, sequential art studies or graphic narrative studies) is an academic field that focuses on comics and sequential art. Although comics and graphic novels have been generally dismissed as less relevant pop c ...

, and the Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work. Wanzo researches African-American literature and culture,

, feminist theory, and the U.S. history of

popular fiction Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre, in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre. A num ...

cultural studies Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices re ...

affect theory Affect theory is a theory that seeks to organize affects, sometimes used interchangeably with emotions or subjectively experienced feelings, into discrete categories and to typify their physiological, social, interpersonal, and internalized manife ...

, and graphic storytelling.

Selected works

* *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wanzo, Rebecca 1975 births Living people Writers from Dayton, Ohio 21st-century American women writers African-American women academics American women academics 21st-century African-American academics 21st-century American academics African-American women writers Miami University alumni Duke University alumni Ohio State University faculty Washington University in St. Louis faculty 21st-century African-American women