Avilez CV 1

GERSHUN AVILEZ July 2016 Department of English & Comparative Literature 517 Greenlaw Hall, CB #3520 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520 [email protected] ____________________________________________________________________________ EDUCATION Ph.D. English. University of Pennsylvania, August 2009 Graduate Certificate, Africana Studies, August 2007 M.A. English. Temple University. May 2004 B.A. English. Hendrix College. June 2002 (Honors with Distinction) PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Associate Professor of English (tenured), 2016-Present Director, UNC Program in Sexuality Studies Director of Graduate Studies, Spring 2017 Affiliated Faculty: Institute of African American Research and Department of Women’s & Gender Studies Assistant Professor of English, 2013-2016 Acting Director, Program in Sexuality Studies, Fall 2015 Yale University Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies, 2010-2013 Affiliated Faculty: American Studies and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies University of Rochester Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Frederick Douglass Institute, 2009-2010 HONORS Arts @ The Core Curatorial Fellowship, Carolina Performing Arts, Fall 2015 ($20,000) Research & Study Assignment, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Fall 2014 Morse Junior Faculty Fellowship & Leave, Yale University, 2013 (declined) Poorvu Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching Excellence, Yale College, 2011 ($10,000)

Avilez CV 2

Diane Hunter Prize for Best Dissertation, English Department, University of Pennsylvania, 2010 (Finalist) Frederick Douglass Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Rochester, 2009-2010 Marilyn Yarbrough Research/Teaching Fellowship, Kenyon College, 2009-2010 (declined) William Fontaine Doctoral Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania. 2004-2009. Joseph Beam Award for Best Essay on Sexual Minorities, Temple University, May 2004 ($500) Future Faculty Fellowship, Temple University, 2002-2004 BIBLIOGRAPHY Refereed Book and Book Chapters: Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism (University of Illinois Press, April 2016). Part of “The New Black Studies” series edited by Darlene Clark Hine & Dwight McBride. “Cloak & Dagger Insurgency: Espionage and Black Power Politics in The Spook Who Sat by the Door” in African American Literature and Culture in Transition: The 1960s, ed. Shelly Eversley (Cambridge UP, Forthcoming 2017) [In Progress] “Staging Social Death: Alienation and Embodiment in Aishah Rahman’s Unfinished Women,” in The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Culture, ed. Soyica Diggs Colbert, Robert Patterson, and Aida Levy-Hussen (Rutgers University Press, 2016), 107-124. “The Black Arts Movement,” in The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature, ed. Julie Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015), 49-64. “African American Writing until 1930,” in The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature, ed. Mikko Tunkhannen and Ellen McCallum (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014), 305-322.

Refereed Articles: “The Aesthetics of Terror: Constructing Felt Threat in Those Bones are Not My Child and Leaving Atlanta," Obsidian: Literature of the African Diaspora. Special Issue: Violence & Black Youth in the Post-Civil Rights U.S. 13.2 (2014): 12-27. “Cartographies of Desire: Mapping Queer Space in the Fiction of Samuel Delany and Darieck Scott,” Callaloo 34.1 (2011): 126-142. “Housing the Black Body: Value, Domestic Space, and African-American Segregation Narratives,” African American Review 42.1 (Spring 2008): 135-147.

Avilez CV 3 reprinted in: Representing Segregation: Toward an Aesthetics of Living Jim Crow and Other Forms of Racial Division, ed. Piper Kendrix Williams and Brian Norman. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 2010. 131-147. Other Publications: “Amiri Baraka.” Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies. Ed. Gene Andrew Jarrett. New York: Oxford UP. (Forthcoming) Book Review: Dagmawi Woubshet’s The Calendar of Loss: Race, Sexuality, and Mourning in the Early AIDS Era, Literature and History (Forthcoming Winter 2016). “Queer Forms, Black Lives: Melvin Dixon, Assotto Saint, and Artistic Experimentation” in Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call, ed. Stephen Fulwood and Charles Stephens. New York: Vintage Entity, 2014. 165-71.

Dissertation: “The Wake of Blackness: Aesthetic Ambivalence and the Post-Black Arts Era.” Submitted in June 2009. University of Pennsylvania. Invited Lectures and Conference Activities: “The Queer Nationalist Imaginary: Black Kinship, Art, and Activism in Home Girls.” Racial Configurations of Queer Kinship Panel. Modern Language Association. Philadelphia, PA. January 2017. “You Can’t Go Home Again: Slavery, Displacement, and Black Belonging.” Roundtable Participant. American Studies Association. Denver, Colorado. November 2016. “Watermelon Woman: Twenty Years Later” Symposium. Roundtable Participant. San Francisco State University. September 2016. “Ethnographic Fiction: Documentation, Dislocation, and Queer Desire in Her Head A Village.” Queer Short Story Panel. Modern Language Association. Austin, TX. January 2016. “Visualizing Black Masculinity.” Ackland Art Museum. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. December 2015. “Writing Queer History: Kinship and Biopolitics in Tarrell Alvin McCraney’s Brother/Sister Cycle.” 21st Century African American Writing Symposium. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. November 2015. “The Illusion is All: Sylvester, Blues Diva Realness, and Black Queer Contingency.” “He’s Come Undone: Black Masculinity and the Curious Art of Vulnerability” Panel. American Studies Association. Toronto, CA. October 2015.

Avilez CV 4 “Social Death & Bio-Politics.” Comparative Literature Seminar. Cornell University. Ithaca, NY. March 2015. “Black Performance Culture & 1960s Civil Rights Reform.” Southern American Studies Association. Atlanta, GA. February 2015. “Alienated Embodiment: Figuring Reproduction and Music in Aishah Rahman’s Unfinished Women.” “The Psychic Hold of Slavery” Symposium. Georgetown University. Washington, D.C. March 2014. “‘Where You Gon Be Standin?’: Spatial Logics, Civil Rights Discourse, and the Poetics of Black Lesbian Identity.” “Art, Activism, and Post-Civil Rights Black Identity” Panel. Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL. January 2014 (Panel Organizer). “Documenting the Real: Artistic Experimentation, Social Documentation, and the Black Arts Movement." Black Mixed Media Poetry Panel. Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL. January 2014 “‘Movements in Black’: The Queer Legacies of the Black Arts Movement.” Celebrating African American and Afro-Caribbean Poetry. Pennsylvania State University. College Park, PA. October 2013. “The Troubling Logic of Reproduction: Black Nationalism and the Artistic Re-imagining of Gender Identity." Duke-UNC Americanist Speaker Series. Durham, NC. September 2013. “This Is Not Art But Only Facts: Ed Bullins's Jo Anne!!! and the Theatrical Spectacle of Civil Rights." “Political Theater?” Panel. Drama Division. Modern Language Association. Boston, MA. January 2013. “The Absence of Violence: Black Childhood and Confession in Leaving Atlanta." Special Session Panel: Violence and the Black Child in Post-Civil Rights U.S.A. Modern Language Association. Boston, MA. January 2013. “Transforming the Public: Artistic Experimentation, Social Critique, and the Black Arts Movement." The Sixties, Fifty Years Later Panel. American Studies Association. San Juan, Puerto Rico. November 2012. “Media, Race, and Public Opinion.” Invited Lecture. Schomburg-Mellon Humanities Summer Institute. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The New York Public Library. New York, New York. June 2012. “Charged Landscapes: Geography and Desire in Dionne Brand’s In Another Place, Not Here.” Caribbean Feminisms Panel. Caribbean Studies Association. Le Gosier, Guadeloupe. May 2012.

Avilez CV 5

“Spike Lee and Contemporary Black Masculine Angst.” Invited Talk. Liberal Arts Distinguished Lecture Series. Quinsigamond Community College. Worcester, MA. November 2011. “Vanishing Acts: Black Absence, White Longing, and the Affective Terrain of Reparations.” The Aesthetics of Reparations Panel. American Studies Association Conference. Baltimore, MD. October 2011. “Queer Legacies of the Black Aesthetic.” Invited Talk. Texas Institute for Textual and Literary Studies. University of Texas at Austin. September 2011. “Black Queer Space and the Critical Value of the Erotic.” Invited Talk. Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. City University of New York Graduate Center. February 2011. “Liminal Poetics: Questions of Place and Identity in Afaa M. Weaver’s My Father’s Geography.” Afaa M. Weaver at 60 Panel. Modern Language Association. Los Angeles, CA. January 2011. “Future Tense: Reproduction, Futurity, and the Grammar of Black Identity.” The Toni Morrison Society Sixth Biennial Conference. Paris, France. November 2010. “Merle Kinbona’s Body: Bodyspace and the Black Diasporic Imagination.” “Black Feminism as Pan-Africanism” Panel. (Black) Movements: Poetics and Praxis. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. July 2010. “Racial Fantasies: Blackness, Agency, and the Aesthetic Value of Whiteness.” Invited Talk. Bunche Center for African American Studies and Department of English. UCLA. January 2010.

“Cartographies of Desire: Queer Spaces in Novels by Samuel Delany and Darieck Scott.” Race, Space, Sexuality Panel. Modern Language Association. Philadelphia, PA. December 2009. “Marooned to Identity: Geography and Reproduction in the Black Imaginary.” Futures of American Studies Institute. Dartmouth College. June 2009. “‘Once You Go White’: Inter-racial Desire and Contemporary Black Female Identity in Film.” Theorizing Blackness Conference. City University of New York. April 2008. TEACHING RECORD

Courses taught at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Fall 2016: Black Masculinity & Femininity – 24 Fall 2016: Race, Health & Narrative – 35

Avilez CV 6 Spring 2016: Black Masculinity & Femininity – 24 Spring 2016: American Literature since 1900 – 35 Fall 2015: Art & Social Radicalism – 20 Fall 2015: Directed Reading: Contemporary Drama & Performance (Graduate) – 2 Summer 2015: American Literature since 1900 – 15 Spring 2015: Race, Health & Narrative (Honors Seminar) – 21 Spring 2015: Theorizing Black Radicalism: Race, Sex & Performance (Graduate) – 8 Summer 2014: American Literature since 1900 – 17 students Summer 2014: Film & Culture: Spike Lee & American Culture – 13 students Spring 2014: Black Gender Studies (Honors First-Year Seminar) – 19 students Spring 2014: American Literature since 1900 – 34 students Fall 2013: African American Literature since 1970 – 36 students Undergraduate Honors Projects supervised at the University of North Carolina: Hallie French, African Americans & Medical Humanities (English Major), In Progress Kaylyn Pogson, Medicine and U.S. Culture (English Major), In Progress Graduate Student Committee Member at University of North Carolina: James Cobb – Chair/Major Field Committee, 2016-Present Andrew Belton – Dissertation Chair, Hip Hop and African American Lit, 2016-Present Don Holmes – Major Field Committee, 2016-Present Travis Alexander – Major Field Committee, 2016-Present Dwight Tanner – Major Field Committee, 2015-Present Sarah George – Major Field Committee, 2015-Present Elisa Faison – Major Field Committee, 2015-Present Moira Bradford – Dissertation Committee: Myth & Anglophone Literature, 2015-Present Laura Broom – Major Field Committee: Contemporary Literature, 2014-Present Kimberly Burnett – Dissertation Committee, Gospel Music & Literature, 2014-Present Eddie Moore – Major Field Committee: Black Masculinity and Wellness, 2013-Present Maria Obando – Dissertation Committee: Pain in Chicana Literature, 2013-Present Lamar Wilson – Dissertation Committee: Black Queer Studies and Poetry, 2013-Present Courses taught at Yale University Spring 2013: African American Literature since 1970 – 35 students Spring 2013: Black Sexuality in Literature & Popular Culture – 21 students Fall 2012: Readings in American Literature – 23 students Fall 2012: Art & Social Radicalism – 19 students Spring 2012: Readings in American Literature – 16 students Spring 2012: Black Sexuality in Literature & Popular Culture – 22 students Fall 2011: Readings in American Literature – 20 students Fall 2011: Art & Social Radicalism – 20 students Spring 2011: Readings in American Literature – 16 students Spring 2011: Black Sexuality in Literature & Popular Culture – 13 students

Avilez CV 7 Spring 2011: Graduate Directed Reading: Black Queer Literature & Theory – 2 students Fall 2010: The Black Arts Movement – 12 students Fall 2010: Law, Race, and Narrative – 13 students Undergraduate Honors Projects supervised at Yale University: Tasia Smith, Blogs and American culture (Ethnicity, Race, & Migration major), 2012 Alexsis Johnson, Contemporary representations of Black women (English major), 2012 Alexis Mitchell, Black queer studies (WGSS major) Kayla Williams, Representations of sexual violence (WGSS major) GRANTS University Research Council Publication Grant, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Fall 2014 ($3,000) Faculty Travel Grant, School of Arts & Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Spring 2014 ($1,000) Faculty Research Grant, School of Arts & Sciences, University of Rochester, Spring 2010 ($1,200) Merit Research Grant, School of Arts & Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Summer 2006 ($3,000) PROFESSIONAL SERVICE To Discipline Editorial Board, Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities & Public Ethics, 2014Editorial Board, Encyclopedia of American Studies, 2013-16 Editorial Advisory Board, Callaloo, 2012-14 Article Manuscript Referee, American Quarterly, GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, Callaloo, Curriculum Inquiry, Cultural Dynamics, Modern Language Studies, Obsidian, Southern Cultures, Utopian Studies, Women & Performance University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Director of Graduate Studies, Spring 2017 Director, UNC Program in Sexuality Studies, 2016-17 University Teaching Awards Committee, 2016-17 Marshall Fellowship Selection Committee, Fall 2016 University Diversity Awards Selection Committee, Spring 2016 University Educational Policy Committee, 2015-2018 Provost Committee on LGBTQ Life, 2015-2018 Junior Medieval Studies Search Committee, English Department, 2015-16 Chair Selection Committee, English Department, 2015-16 University Diversity Liaison, English Department, 2015-16 Acting Director, Program in Sexuality Studies, Fall 2015

Avilez CV 8 Faculty Mentor, UNC Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program, Summer 2015 University Educational Policy Committee, Spring 2015 University Minority Male Strategic Planning Committee, Spring 2015English Department Graduate Advisory Committee, 2014-16 Faculty Mentor, Moore Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program, Summer 2014, Summer 2016 English Department Diversity Committee, 2013-14, 2015-16 English Department “New Directions” Committee, 2013-14 Yale University Aims & Procedures, English Department, 2012-13 Diversity Recruitment Coordinator, English Graduate Admissions, 2012 Freshman Advising, Silliman College, 2011-3 Faculty Coordinator, Mellon Research Forum, Yale University, 2011-3 Faculty Resident Fellow, Silliman College, Yale University, 2011-3 English 127 Course Director, 2011-12, 2012-13 English Department Graduate Studies Committee, 2011-12, 2012-13 Americanist Colloquium, Faculty Convener, 2011-12 Yale Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program, Faculty Mentor, Summer 2011 Yale Steere Prize Committee, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department, Spring 2011 Honors and Prizes Committee, English Department, 2010-2011 Senior Essays and Special Projects Committee, English Department, 2010-11 Yale LGBT Studies Committee, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13 Graduate Admissions, African American Studies, 2010-3 English Department Graduate Spanish Language Translation Exam Reader, 2010-3 Professional memberships Modern Language Association American Studies Association