Irvin Hunt

With special attention to the relationship among activism and cultural production, his research and teaching focus on African American literature and history, Black social movements, mutual aid, and the politics of Black humor.

Hunt is the author of Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement (UNC Press, 2022), which explores how Black artists and activist pioneered practices of mutual aid and fundamentally changed what a social movement can be. It was honorable mention for the William Scarborough Sanders Prize of the Modern Language Associations, a prize awarded annually to an outstanding scholarly study in Black American literature or culture, short listed for the Stone Book Award, which recognizes the most exemplary contemporary scholarship and writing within the field of African American history and culture, and a finalist for the Best New Book in African American History and Culture from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. His work has appeared in American Quarterly, American Literature, American Literary History, Public Books, Dilettante Army, Post45, and elsewhere. His work has received support from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John W. Kluge Foundation, and the NAACP. His is currently working on two books, A New Language for Living in Black Women's Poetry, an exploration of contemporary poetics after the apocalyptic 1970s and 80s, and My Son and Other Cities: Stories. Hunt was the 2022-23 Helen Corley Petit Scholar for an extraordinary record of scholarship and teaching and was awarded for the same a Conrad Humanities Scholarship. He currently serves the college as the Deans's Fellow in Inclusive Excellence.