Ruth E. Carter Keynote Speaker

Ruth E. Carter is a two-time Academy Award-winning American film costume designer. Best known for transforming the Black Panther superhero into an African King, Carter made history as the first Black person to win the Costume Design category, giving Marvel Studios their first Oscar. With BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER, she became the first Black woman to win multiple Academy Awards in any category, as well as the first costume designer to win for both a film and its sequel.

Carter honors African culture through her costumes for BLACK PANTHER and BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER, merging traditional and contemporary influences and incorporating technology to create Afrofuturistic pieces that empower the female form and honor ancient cultures. In WAKANDA FOREVER, she transformed the original Wakandan looks and introduced new superheroes and the underwater world of Talokan to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Tasked with creating hundreds of costumes and multiple builds for superhero characters, Carter’s designs are steeped in symbolism and storytelling, elevating characters by adding emotional and cultural depth. She also created breathtaking wearable art that honors post-classic Mesoamerican Maya culture for the Indigenous futuristic Talokan.

Over her three-decade career in film, television, and theater, Carter has earned seventy credits and collaborated with prolific directors, including Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg, Ava DuVernay, and Ryan Coogler.

Carter’s costumes provide an arc to the narratives of African Americans in films such as DO THE RIGHT THING, MALCOLM X, WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT, AMISTAD, THE BUTLER, MARSHALL, SELMA, DOLEMITE IS MY NAME, COMING 2 AMERICA, and BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER. Her dedication to retraining the eye to see beauty through costume design and telling stories that enrich the Black experience cements her legacy as a preeminent voice on period genres and Afro aesthetics.

Her outstanding costume design work has been recognized with Academy Award nominations for MALCOLM X (1993) and AMISTAD (1998), as well as an Emmy nomination for the miniseries reboot of ROOTS (2016). Carter has also been honored with the Costume Designers Guild’s Career Achievement Award (2019) and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (2021). She is a board member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and her costumes are featured in the traveling museum exhibition “Afrofuturism in Costume Design” and in her book The Art of Ruth E. Carter, released in May 2023.

Beloved in her hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts, Carter was given the key to the city in 2021 for her achievements and service to the community. She is a graduate of Hampton University (HBCU), where she recently served as commencement speaker and received an honorary doctorate. She also holds an honorary doctorate from Suffolk University in Massachusetts.