Professor / Author / Speaker
Professor of Humanities and Classical Education
University of Dallas
About
Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas. She is the author of Giving the Devil his Due: Flannery O’Connor and The Brothers Karamazov, which received a 2018 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award in the Culture & the Arts; as well as two books on Walker Percy: The Search for Influence: Walker Percy and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Ohio State University Press, 2017) and Reading Walker Percy’s Novels (Louisiana State University Press, 2018); most recently she co-edited Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020). She has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship to the Czech Republic, an NEH grant to study Dante in Florence in 2014, and the Biola Center for Christian Thought sabbatical fellowship. In 2018 she received the Emerging Public Intellectual Award given by a coalition of North American think tanks in collaboration with the Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University College, and in 2019 she received the Hiett Prize in Humanities from The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.
Education
Baylor University
Ph.D in Religion and Literature (2006-2009)
University of Dallas
M.A. in English (2004-2006)
Pepperdine University
B.A. in Creative Writing (2000-2004)
Employment
Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence, Humanities and Classical Education
University of Dallas, 2020-2021
Associate Professor, Humanities
John Brown University, 2013-2020
Graduate Instructor, Catholic Studies, Distance Education
University of St. Thomas, 2019
Fulbright Scholar
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, 2014
Director, Study Abroad in London
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Spring 2013
Assistant Professor, English
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, 2009-2013
Instructor of Great Texts
Honors College, Baylor University, 2007-2009
Honors and Awards
Hiett Prize in the Humanities Recipient 2019
The Hiett Prize in the Humanities is an annual award of $50,000 aimed at identifying candidates who are ascending in a career devoted to the humanities and whose work shows extraordinary promise to have a significant impact on contemporary culture.
Emerging Scholar in Theology and the Arts
“Culture and the Arts” Book of the Year Award 2018
From Christianity Today, for Giving the Devil his Due: Flannery O’Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky, Cascade Books 2017.
Emerging Public Intellectual Award 2017
From Redeemer University College, CARDUS, Acton Institute, Henry Institute, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, and Center for Public Justice.
Research Fellow
Biola University Center for Christian Thought, Grant from Templeton Trust (Fall 2017)
National Endowment for the Humanities
Summer Institute on Dante in Florence, Italy (Summer 2014)
Academic Service
- Academic Board, Classical Learning Test (2020)
- Chair of the Board and Founder, Sager Classical Academy
- Committee for the Catholic Imagination Conference
- Judge for Conference on Christianity and Literature Book of the Year Award (2018)
- Education Committee, Redeemer Presbyterian Church (Spring 2019)
- SCMLA Chair of Flannery O’Connor Regular Session (Tulsa 2017)
- Director of “Teaching the Truth in Love” Professional Development workshop for Honors Scholars Faculty (February 2017)
- JBU Faculty Colloquium on Fulbright (Fall 2016)
- SWCCL Conference Director (November 2014)
- JBU Chapel Presentation (September 2014)
- JBU Faculty Colloquium on Teaching Abroad (September 2014)
- Convocation speaker, Pepperdine University, London program (Spring 2013)
- Judge of the Annual Fiction Contest, Christianity Today (2011-2013)
- Provost’s Academic Leadership Seminar, UMHB (2010, 2011)
- College and Career Readiness Initiative, Austin, TX (February 2011)
- University Scholars’ Day Committee, UMHB (2010-2012)
- Core Curriculum Committee, UMHB (2010-2012)
- Sigma Tau Delta Book Club Presenter, UMHB: “Chestertonian Reading of Alice in Wonderland.” (April 2010)
- President and Founder of ISI Graduate Reading Group, Baylor University (2007-2009)
- Head Graduate Fellow, Honors Residential College, Baylor University (2008-2009)
- English Graduate Student Association, Baylor University, Social Chair (2007-2008)