Kylee Pastore Asirvatham
Opal Gay
Black Studies
Assistant Professor
Bio
Opal Gay is an artist and scholar committed to advancing health equity for Black, queer, and transgender people. They earned their PhD in Sociology from Georgia State University in 2025 and have collected years of academic and applied experience.
Opal has published their work across several esteemed journals, including The Journal of Bisexuality, Psychology & Sexuality, and The International Journal of Transgender Health. They have also worked as a policy researcher with community organizations such as the Southern Center for Human Rights, Black Futurists Group, and the Partnership for Southern Equity.
Opal presently serves on the editorial board of The Black Scholar, as well as the Board of Directors for the Trans Housing Coalition. They are a Sadler Scholar at The Hastings Center for Bioethics, a Health Policy Research Scholar alumna with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and a 2024 Peoples Response Fellow with the Movement for Black Lives.
1. What questions, ideas, or creative concerns are at the center of your work right now?
My work is committed to understanding how social power influences the livelihood of Black queer people. For instance, in my forthcoming monograph, Black Sheep, I investigate how stigma shapes identity development and relationships among Black nonbinary people. I ask not only how interlocking societal systems of nation, race, gender, sexuality, and class produce the conditions of prejudice and discrimination, but also, inadvertently, how these same forces catalyze alternative and healthier modes of self-expression, relationship, and communal life amongst socially stigmatized peoples.
2. What drew you to CCNY and to teaching within the Division of Humanities and the Arts?
What drew me to teaching at CCNY, and particularly within the Division of Humanities and the Arts, is the rich history of student leadership. I am especially humbled by the opportunity to join the Black Studies Department, which has a rooted history of student activists who have made higher education more accessible and inclusive for students of color here in New York, as well as across the country.
3. What do you hope CCNY students will experience, discover, or reconsider in your classroom?
I come into the CCNY Division of Humanities and the Arts community as a social scientist, mixed-methods researcher, and policy analyst. This matters because in my courses, I hope to collapse the boundary that often exists between being an empiricist and being an artist. My classes will be a space where students learn how to leverage data in ways that are creative, artful, and expansive. My goal as an educator is to create collaborative and communal environments where students can work across differences to innovate solutions to society’s most pressing issues.
4. How has a particular text, artwork, mentor, place, or experience shaped the direction of your work?
Born and raised in Alabama and trained in Atlanta, Georgia, I have always taken to the work of Black radicals. My research is most influenced by Patricia Hill Collins and by understanding social health inequities through a Black queer feminist lens. But as a creative, and even as an individual, I would say I have been most impacted by the writings of James Baldwin and by the spiritual and creative wisdom of the Black prophetic tradition.
5. What are you most excited to contribute to—or explore within—the intellectual and creative community at CCNY?
I am eager to grow as an artist and explore how I can incorporate more poetry, photography, and creative writing into my professional work. However, I am undeniably most excited to learn, grow, and work alongside the diverse student leaders of CCNY and the Black Studies Department.