We are very pleased to announce that Professor GerShun Avilez will be joining the advisory board for the Master’s Program in Literature, Medicine, and Culture. His course English 370: Race, Health & Narrative has been enthusiastically received by undergraduate students and he will be teaching English 763: Introduction to Literature, Medicine & Culture this upcoming spring. 
Professor Avilez is the Director of the UNC Program in Sexuality Studies and Affiliate Faculty in the Institute of African American Research and Department of Women’s & Gender Studies. He is a cultural studies scholar who specializes in contemporary African American literature and visual culture and 20th century American literature in general. His teaching extends to the literature of the Black Diaspora. Much of his scholarship explores how questions of gender and sexuality inform artistic production. He also works in the fields of political radicalism, spatial theory, and legal studies.
His book Radical Aesthetics & Modern Black Nationalism (Illinois) appeared in 2016 as a part of “The New Black Studies” Series. The book investigates how Black nationalist rhetoric impacted African American artistic experimentation in the late 20th and 21st centuries through an examination of drama, novels, poetry film, and visual art. He is at work on two new book-length projects on (1) Black sexuality and artistic culture and (2) questions of space in African American literature and cultural history. Throughout his work and teaching, he is committed to studying a wide variety of art forms, including, drama, fiction, non-fiction, film, poetry, visual and performance art, ethnography, and comic books.