Caroline Jackson Smith

Professor of Theater and Africana Studies

Areas of Study

Education

BA, Yale University, 1974

Biography

Caroline Jackson Smith is professor of theater and Africana studies. A recipient of the prestigious 1993 fellowship for early career directors from the Theater Communications Group/National Endowment for the Arts, Prof. Jackson-Smith made her New York debut at the New York Public Theater in 1995, when she directed Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro for the Signature Theater Company.

She has directed and or worked as a dramaturg for the Cleveland Play House, Great Lakes Theater Festival, Karamu House, and the Cleveland Public Theatre on such productions as The Women of Plums, The Talented Tenth, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and Our Town, Your Town.

A graduate of Yale University, Prof. Jackson-Smith served as the executive director of the Yale Afro-American Cultural Center for eight years. Since coming to Oberlin in 1989, she has directed The Gospel at Colonus, The Tapestry, The Resurrection of Lady Lester, Darker Face of the Earth, and The Colored Museum, among other productions.

Fall 2024

Theater Now! — THEA 190

Workshop: Playwrighting and Performance in the Time of the Black Lives Matter Movement — AAST 278

Playwrighting and Performance in the Time of the Black Lives Matter Movement — THEA 278

Spring 2025

Framing Blackness: African Americans and Film in The United States, 1915 to the Present — AAST 261

Theater of the Millennium — THEA 309