Dr. T. Anansi Wilson is an award-winning scholar of law, critical theory, political theory, literary, sex/uality, gender, cultural and Black Studies. They are a keynote speaker, consultant, racial-justice strategist, and author of creative nonfiction. Their legal research is situated in legal philosophy, critical theory, political economy, Black political thought, and constitutional and criminal law and procedure. 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, Black & Queer 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 awarded the inaugural “Changemaker of the Year” in 2021 by the Student Bar Association at Mitchell Hamline school of Law. They were inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College in October 2022. In 2023, they were chosen by the graduating class of MHSL to deliver the “Faculty Charge” at Commencement. They were also awarded the 2023 “Equity & Justice Award” by the Minnesota Lavender Bar Association and, in 2024, named a finalist by the Minnesota People of Color Pride Association for the “Trailblazer Award.” They are regular keynote at the National Black Pre-Law Conference and the National HBCU Pre-Law Conference. They work has been featured in Gawker, the Star Tribune, the MN Post, MPR, NPR, ABC News, PBS, the Christian Science Monitor, AfroPunk, The Guardian among many others.