DeLisa D. Hawkes is a scholar of African American Studies and an affiliate faculty member of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program, specializing in nineteenth- to twenty-first-century African American literature. Her current book project examines how authors of the New Negro Renaissance used their writings to make strides towards anti-colonial thinking within Black American communities through their discussions about Black and Indigenous opposition to white-settler colonialism and white supremacy. Her project is also interested in how these texts influence narratives of racial identity and kinship in the United States. Hawkes’ research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections, including  J19, MELUS, Langston Hughes Review, Studies in the Fantastic, North Carolina Literary Review, Reimagining the Republic: Race, Citizenship, and Nation in the Literary Work of Albion W. Tourgée (Fordham 2022), and 21st Century US Historical Fiction: Contemporary Responses to the Past (Palgrave 2020).