John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and winner of the Hugo Award for his co-adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s dystopian novel The Parable of the Sower. As professor of media and cultural studies at University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color. Jennings is co-editor of the 2016 Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers) and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. In 2023 Jennings co-created the Black superhero Ghost Light for Marvel Entertainment. Jennings’ latest publications are The Adventures of Lion Man with Rosarium Publishing and the Parable of the Talents (Abrams Comic Arts) graphic novel adaptation with long-time collaborator Damian Duffy, which is a 2026 NAACP Image Award nominee for Outstanding Literary Achievement - Graphic Novel.

Co-sponsored by LGBTQ Studies