• Apply for the FDI Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
• Apply for the FDI Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellowship
• Current Fellows

Current Fellows at the FDI

Postdoctoral Fellow 2009-10

GerShun Avilez is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African & African-American Studies at the University of Rochester.  He earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009.  While at Penn, he also earned an interdisciplinary graduate certificate in Africana Studies.  He specializes in African-American and Black Diasporic literary and critical cultures with a particular focus on conceptions of Black gender expression and sexual identity.  His dissertation provides a critical frame for reading contemporary African-American literature and other cultural productions.  His research interests include: critical race theory, the Black body, African-American film, spatial theory, and hip-hop culture.    

During the fall semester, he is teaching a new course: “Private Acts/Public Bodies: Sex in African-American Literature & Popular Culture.”  In the spring, he will teach AAS 110: Introduction to African American Studies. 

Predoctoral Fellow 2009-10

Johanna Almiron is a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaií at Manoa in American Studies specializing in the fields of Visual Culture and Black Cultural Studies. Her dissertation currently titled, “COSMICONCEPT: How the Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat Signifies,” focuses on reading the social and cultural politics of the iconic visual and performance artist of eighties fame, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Research interests include the inter-sectionality between art, performance, popular culture, music (jazz), and satire with the process of social and political transformation. Almiron has a background in teaching Ethnic Studies, African American Studies, Asian Pacific American studies, Filipino American studies, Queer and Feminist studies, poetry and social movements.
Almiron received her MA in Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University and BA in African American Studies, Fine Arts-Dance from Oberlin College. Almiron is also an award-winning performance artist, director and radio deejay. Her popular KTUH-FM Honolulu show was titled “Prince, Makadangdang & The Revolution."