In 2016, Aaron Coleman began to pursue a PhD in the International Writers Track of the Comparative Literature department, studying poetry and translation of the African Diaspora in the Americas, and completing his degree in 2021. In his work, he explored the relationships between American – in both national and hemispheric senses of the term – and Afrodiasporic literatures through literature, theory, translation, and creative writing, translating poet Nicolás Guillén’s book, El Gran Zoo (1967). Meanwhile, Coleman continued to connect with the community at large in St. Louis, becoming an important figure in the St. Louis Black Arts Renaissance.