GerShun Avilez has been named the thirteenth dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Avilez comes to his new role from the University of Maryland, where he served as associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Arts & Humanities, founding director of the Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities, and coordinator of the Africana/Black Studies Colloquium. He also taught as a professor of English with affiliations in the department of African American studies and the Harriet Tubman Department of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. Earlier in his career, he taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Yale University.
A scholar of African American and Black Diasporic literature and visual culture, Dr. Avilez’s work spans the fields of political radicalism, spatial theory, gender studies, and medical humanities. He has published extensively in his discipline, including two books: Black Queer Freedom: Spaces of Injury and Paths of Desire (University of Illinois Press, 2020) and Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism (University of Illinois Press, 2016).
Dr. Avilez is an honors graduate of Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, where he majored in English. He holds a master’s degree in English from Temple University in Philadelphia and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania.
