Avalos arrived at Iowa State University in the Fall of 1993 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship (1991–93) in the departments of Anthropology and Religious Studies at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[1] In 1994, Avalos founded and later became first director of the US Latino/Latina Studies Program at Iowa State University. The program is dedicated to teaching courses about U.S. Latinos, who are defined as people living in the U.S. who trace their roots to the Spanish speaking countries of Latin America.[7][8]
In 2005, Avalos and two colleagues published a statement against the teaching of both
intelligent design and
creationism as legitimate science; it was eventually signed by over 130 faculty members at Iowa State University, and became a model for other statements at the University of Northern Iowa and at the University of Iowa.[9][10]
Mr.Avalos passed away due to compications from
bladder cancer which he was first diagnosed in 2012
[1] .
Publications
Avalos' first major work was Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel (1995), published in the Harvard Semitic Monograph series. The book combined systematically critical biblical studies with medical anthropology to reconstruct the health care systems of
Ancient Greece,
Mesopotamia, and
Israel.[11] In Health Care and the Rise of Christianity (1999) Avalos outlined the thesis that Christianity began, in part, as a health care reform movement that sought to address the problems voiced by patients in the
Greco-Roman world.[12]
In August 2018, Avalos received the first Hispanic American Freethinkers Lifetime Achievement Award "honoring a lifetime of scholarship and advocacy promoting freethought”. He was inducted into the 2019 Iowa Latino Hall of Fame for his role in founding the US Latino/a Studies Program at Iowa State University.[1]
Books
The Reality of Religious Violence: From Biblical to Modern Times (Sheffield, UK:
Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2019)
This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies (co-edited with Sarah Melcher and Jeremy Schipper) (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007)
ISBN1-58983-186-1.
Strangers in Our Own Land: Religion in U.S. Latina/o Literature, (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005)
ISBN0-687-33045-9.
Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005)
ISBN1-59102-284-3
Introduction to the U.S. Latina and Latino Religious Experience, (Editor; Boston: Brill, 2004)
ISBN0-391-04240-8.
¿Se puede saber si Dios existe? [Can One Know if God Exists?]. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press, 2003)
ISBN1-59102-043-3.
Health Care and the Rise of Christianity, (Peabody: Mass: Hendrickson Press, 1999)
ISBN1-56563-337-7.
Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel (Harvard Semitic Monographs 54: Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995)
ISBN0-7885-0098-8.
^Noegel, Scott (1997). "Reviewed work: Illness and Health Care in the Ancient near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel, Hector Avalos". AJS Review. 22 (1): 107–109.
doi:
10.1017/S0364009400009272.
JSTOR1486871.
S2CID163078714.