Andy Hines is the Senior Associate Director of the Aydelotte Foundation. He studies models of the university posed by Black writers and Black social movements, as well as the significant but understudied contributions of Black writers to literary criticism and theory. His book, Outside Literary Studies: Black Criticism and the University (University of Chicago Press, 2022), recounts how mid-twentieth century Black writers defined literature and critical thought through and against the institutionalization of literary studies in predominantly white universities. He is working on a new book on the history of socialist and Communist institutions of adult education.

He is the editor of an in-progress collection of essays that examine the political economic function of the American university, titled University Keywords, to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

His writing has appeared in American Quarterly, Protean Magazine, Blind Field, Criticism, and Public Books. He earned his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 2015.