Adam Schuster, PHD

BIOGRAPHY

Adam Schuster joined the English Department in Fall 2022, where he teaches courses in African American literature, advanced writing, contemporary speculative fiction and comics, as well as the department’s introductory literature survey. He earned his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, specializing in post-1945 African American literature and 20th century American literature more broadly. While at UW-Madison, he also served as the Assistant Music Advisor for the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s Music Committee and as a Community Writing Instructor for Madison Writing Assistance. Since joining CSUB, Adam has served as the faculty advisor for Orpheus, the university’s annual student-led creative arts journal. In Fall 2025, he became the director of the English Department’s graduate program.     

Adam’s current research explores the intersection of race, literature, and sound in the mid- to late twentieth century. His dissertation traced how Black artists such as Langston Hughes and Sun Ra experimented with literary form to reimagine vernacular music’s racialization during the Cold War. His peer-reviewed research has been published in MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States and JMMLA: Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association.