T. Anansi Wilson

Dr. T. Anansi Wilson is an award-winning scholar of law, literary and cultural studies, a racial-justice strategist, and an author of creative nonfiction. Their legal research is situated in legal philosophy, critical theory, political economy, and constitutional law. Their writing and scholarship primarily focuses on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination crafted in response to, and resistance against, the social, political, and legal realities of domination in the West. They seek to understand the processes of retrenchment after moments of social progress, and how freedom dreams are nevertheless sustained. Wilson’s work analyzes the ever changing relationships between race, law, sexuality, power, and citizenship; both in the construction of law and policy and the maintenance of the way we live our lives. They are particularly concerned with Fourth, 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment questions. Their teaching interests include criminal law, criminal procedure, constitutional law, federal criminal civil rights, Fourth, 13th and 14th amendment law, Reconstruction, political and civil rights, critical race studies, LGBTQ issues, and all areas pertaining to race, law, and society.

T. Anansi Wilson employs Critical Race, Black Feminist, Performance and Women & Gender Studies and legal methodologies to examine how instances and (extra) legal precedents of anti-Black violence and racial-sexual terror continue to frame and impact notions of Black being and citizenship. Professor Wilson employs a multidisciplinary gaze to engage the creative, the legal, and the literary to uncover an emerging approach to encountering, understanding, and extrapolating anti-Blackness as a jurisprudential logic, underpinning, and precedent embedded in the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and decisions they inform.

Dr. Wilson was inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College in October 2022.

• Slavery and the law
• AntiBlackness and law
• Law and humanities
• LGBTQ studies
• Civil rights

• Critical race theory
• Black political thought
• Criminal procedure
• Constitutional law
• Race, law, and sexuality

• University of Texas - Austin PhD in African and African Diaspora Studies 2021
• Howard University School of Law, JD in Law 2017
• Tufts University, BA in American Studies 2013

• Mitchell Hamline School of Law, associate professor of law, 2022–; assistant professor of law, 2021–22
• University of California at Hastings College of Law and The Center for Racial and Economic Justice, affiliated scholar and adjunct faculty of constitutional law, 2020–21
• Middle Tennessee State University, dissertation fellow and lecturer in political science and international relations and global studies and human geography, 2019–20
• University of Texas, teaching assistant, Institute for Urban Policy, Research and Analysis, 2018–19
• Beloit College, Ousley Scholar in Residence, 2018
• Dartmouth College, summer fellow, Futures of American Studies, 2018

• Equality & Justice Award, Minnesota Lavender Bar Association, February 2023
• Inductee, Martin Luther King Collegiate of Scholars, Morehouse College, Sumer/Fall 2022
• Change Maker of The Year Award, MHSL Student Bar Association, April 2022
• Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize (Finalist, competition ongoing), American Studies Association, September/October 2021
• Dissertation Completion Fellow, University of Texas, Austin, August 2020-May 2021
• Diversity Dissertation Fellow & Instructor in Political Science & Black Studies, Middle Tennessee State University, July 2019-July
• 2020
• Graduate Summer Fellowship, Audre & Bernard Rappaport Center, University of Texas School of Law, May 2019-August 2019
• Andrew Mellon Summer Dissertation Bootcamp, (Full Tuition & Stipend) UT Austin, Summer 2019
• Ousley Scholar In Residence, Beloit College, September 2018
• Futures of American Studies Summer Residency, Dartmouth College, Summer 2018

• T. Anansi Wilson, Sexual Profiling & BlaQueer Furtivity: BlaQueers on the Run. 24 The Scholar: St. Mary’s Law Review on Race & Social Justice 179 (2022). 
• T. Anansi Wilson, And What Of The Black In Black Letter Law? A BlaQueer Reflection, 30 Tulane Journal of Law & Sexuality: A Review of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Law 147 (2021). 
• T. Anansi Wilson, The Strict Scrutiny of Black and BlaQueer Life, 48 Hastings Const. L.Q. 181 (2020). 
• T. Anansi Wilson, Furtive Blackness: On Blackness and Being, 48 Hastings Const. L.Q. 141 (2020).