Sarah Ann Wells

It’s been 12 years since Sarah Ann Wells joined the UW–Madison faculty, drawn to its world-class reputation as a major public university and its strengths in Latin American studies, cinema and media studies, and literary studies. Wells lectures in both English and Art History, and last year she became director of the Center for Visual Culture and Performance Studies — the perfect interdisciplinary and public-facing mix of her interests.

“For 25 years, CVCPS has been a site of unprecedented innovation, where scholars and artists, graduate students and faculty, work together to explore in innovative ways major ideas in our world,” says Wells. 

As she closes out the summer, she’s looking forward to adding two new courses to a stacked academic year: Fall’s “Brazil, in Theory,” and Spring’s “Translationships,” which is part of her new role as associate editor for the Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation.

“My courses are quite popular with STEM students in particular because I combine ‘outlandish’ content (science fiction, surrealism, experimental art and film) that energizes us with very clear guidelines and expectations for what it means to think, speak, read, and write critically,” says Wells. “Students want to think through big ideas under clear parameters and in small-group settings, and I really enjoy thinking with them, especially as our world is changing so quickly.”

That philosophy slots nicely with CVCPS’s 2026-27 line-up of visiting artists and scholars. This year’s theme is “Hallucination,” and includes its first invited musician (experimental artist Lea Bertucci) and Guggenheim Fellow visual artist Itziar Barrio, among others. 

“We are all craving person-to-person and collective experiences,” says Wells. “The arts and humanities provide singular scenarios to think through and experience with others.”